Strictly speaking book reviews shouldn’t be written by fans. After all a ‘Fan Review’ lacks the nicely balanced analysis, which the reader of a book review deserves and expects. No football fan for example wants the ‘best’ team to win. A football fan wants their team to win regardless of the quality of the winning goal. Violent shoving followed by a lucky deflection off the knee- that’s fine by me: ‘If and only if we win’.

So you’ve been warned. Mick Herron is a genius. His writing is exquisite. His dialogue is filled with acerbic wit. His principal characters are larger than life but drive the reader on cheering wildly.

Herron writes about failed spies who always seem to generate ‘action’. And like all great stories they succeed; they fail; they cry, they die; they have enormous human failings. Dive in. You wont regret it. In fact you’ll thank me for not being analytical and introducing doubt where there is no room for doubt.