Zoë Boehm doesn’t do death. It’s a rule. Yet here she is—in this new ambitious detective novel from the sure-footed Mick Herron—worried by three of them. Zoë herself has killed a man, and self-defense or not, it cripples her emotions still. She also remembers Wez, a twelve-year-old kid afraid of heights, who tumbled to his death from the top of a tower block; she knew him when he was nine and snatching purses from middle-aged ladies. Then, there’s Caroline Daniels. They’re saying that Caroline’s death was accidental: that she fell off the crowded underground platform and died beneath the wheels of an oncoming train. Nonetheless, Caroline’s employer, Amory Grayling, is disturbed. Caroline, it seems, had recently acquired a lover who remains mysteriously faceless and nameless.
