Nobody Walks (2015) is a completely independent novel even though its MI5 is the same as the one in Herron’s Slough House series. Jackson Lamb is mentioned.

Like the rest, the audio book is narrated by the excellent Gerard Doyle.

The suspicious death of his son brings an undercover spook Tom Bettany for MI-5’s Special Ops out of retirement with a vengeance.

Maybe it’s the guilt he feels about losing touch with Liam that’s gnawing at him, or maybe he’s actually put his finger on a labyrinthine plot, but either way he’ll get to the bottom of the tragedy, no matter whose feathers he has to ruffle.

But more than a few people are interested to hear Bettany is back in town, from incarcerated mob bosses to those in the highest echelons of MI5.

He might have thought he’d left it all behind when he first skipped town, but nobody ever really walks away.

Amazon

Russell Banks is an excellent author, twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Reserve (2008) is good. Well written.

But ultimately didn’t win me over.

… set on the cusp of the 2nd World War, … raises dangerous questions about class, politics, art, love, and madness—and explores what happens when two powerful personalities, trapped at opposite ends of a social divide, begin to break the rules.

Vanessa Cole is a stunningly beautiful and wild heiress. Twice-married, she has been scandalously linked to rich and famous men.

On the night of July 4, 1936, inside her family’s remote Adirondack Mountain enclave known as the Reserve, Vanessa will lose her father to a heart attack—and meet Jordan Groves, a seductively carefree local artist.

Jordan is easy prey for Vanessa’s electrifying charm. But when Vanessa becomes unhinged by her father’s unexpected death, she begins to spin out of control, manipulating and destroying the lives of all who cross her path.

Moving from the secluded beauty of the Adirondacks to war-torn Spain and fascist Germany …

Click PLAY or watch an interview, late in life, on YouTube.

The 24th book (2024) in the Joe Pickett series is Three-Inch Teeth.

Excellent. As are all the rest.

A rogue grizzly bear has gone on a rampage—killing, among others, the potential fiancé of Joe’s daughter.

At the same time, Dallas Cates, who Joe helped lock up years ago, is released from prison with a special list tattooed on his skin. He wants revenge on the people who sent him away: the six people he blames for the deaths of his entire family and the loss of his reputation and property.

Yellowface (2023) written by R. F. Kuang is a satire of racial diversity in the publishing industry as well as a metafiction about social media, particularly Twitter.

Super popular, it sounded right up my alley.

The first quarter of the book was engaging. An interesting plot.

June Hayward, an unsuccessful young author, finds herself the only witness to the death of her former classmate and casual friend, Athena Liu, a Chinese-American author who is an industry darling.

She decides to position herself as best friend of the author and begins to edit and re-write Athena’s manuscript, a novel about Chinese laborers in World War I.

As she changes more and more of the draft, June begins to feel ownership over the novel and decides to publish it as her original work.  …

It started to drag. Too much doom scrolling on Twitter. Too repetitious.

Finally — I quit about half way through the book.