Arkady Pashkin smuggles a gun into the Needle meeting via his briefcase.He Knows Too Much: The reason for Min Harper’s murder.Genre Savvy: Min Harper is wary of getting caught up in a Regents Park operation, not least because he remembers what happened last time.Marcus Longridge has a gambling problem.Which necessitates a deal between Katinsky and ‘Pashkin’ to hire him back. Former Regime Personnel: Andrei Chernitsky.Jackson flippantly offers to arrange her assassination - which prompts Taverner to thank him for his kindness. They really don’t like each other, but they dislike MI5 first desk Ingrid Tearney even more. Enemy Mine: Briefly and jokingly with Jackson Lamb and MI5’s second desk ‘Lady Di’ Taverner.Deep Cover Agent: [[spoiler: The 'cicada' families who moved to Upshott, Soviet sleeper agents who've been waiting to be reactivated.Which is an early hint that Katinsky is more than he appears to be.

Bluff the Imposter: Nikolai Katinsky actually manages to pull this one on Jackson Lamb.

Becoming the Mask: The ‘Cicadas’, the deep cover agents settled in Upshott, are enjoying their new lives and don’t respond to Katinsky’s orders.

Piotr gets a bullet in the head when he’s no longer needed for the robbery.

Badass Boast: There may be a policeman present, but when Lamb’s patience wears thin, he’s very clear in stating that the guy he’s talking to will have a broken nose long before the policeman intervenes.The narration mentions her partner, but never gives a name or gender for them. Marcus later asks if this was actually true and Shirley doesn’t answer. Ambiguously Gay: When under investigation for punching her stalker, Shirley Dander tells MI5 she’s gay, in the hope it’ll make it harder for them to sack her.He suddenly looks old, tired and slightly bewildered. He’s dying of liver cancer and his final plan - revenge for the deaths the British caused in his home town - has abruptly failed because every last one of his deep cover agents betrayed him. Alas, Poor Villain: Katinsky’s final confrontation with River.The book is also being adapted into the second season of the Slow Horses series.

And perhaps a ghost story from the last days of the cold war has resurfaced to haunt England. Sequel to Slow Horses and second of the Jackson Lamb spy novels.Ī retired spy dies on a bus, in questionable circumstances, and nobody except Jackson Lamb seems to care.īut with MI5 under close political scrutiny, his Slough House team is a little depleted, with two of them ‘unofficially’ on loan to look after a visiting Russian oligarch.

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