Slough house

Tuesday

Nicholas Lezard

Unfinished business in Berlin: The Secret Hours, by Mick Herron, reviewed

During the summer, I noticed a new noise coming from the crowd whenever Ben Stokes or another English player bashed or stroked the ball to the boundary. It wasn’t quite the cheer you’d expect; more an ahhhh of appreciation, as you would deliver to someone who is offering a masterclass in how to win a game when it has, to all intents and purposes, already been won. By the time I was about halfway through The Secret Hours, that was the noise I was making in my head, as new twists kept unfolding. And they did keep unfolding, if twists can be said to unfold, right up until the last

Thursday

Mick Herron

John le Carré’s wild MI6 Christmas parties

In the middle of December, for reasons I’m coming to, I woke early in a posh hotel. I lay semi-dozing while my partner, Jo, was in the shower, and eventually worked out how to tune the bedside radio, an internet device, to Radio 4. The six o’clock pips sounded as a bathrobed Jo emerged, earbuds in place: on her digital radio she heard the headlines some seconds ahead of me, and as she sat on the bed, her smile faltered. What’s the matter, I asked. John le Carré’s died, she said. A heartbeat or two later, while the internet transmission caught up with the digital, the radio confirmed this. John