Guys, the Apple TV+ adaptation of Slow Horses returns next month! I can’t wait! I also heard that this season – season six – will combine two books in the series together, so I dropped everything and focussed on reading up to Joe Country, and then Slough House before anything else!

Joe Country, book 6, finds some of our Slow Horses out in the field on a missing persons case in rural Wales, hence the book’s title. This installment continues to deliver us Herron’s trademark and cynical wit – something that was very much needed as an occassional reprieve because this book is a lot darker than those that came before it. Perhaps, this is in part to Joe Country being set in isolated countryside, and although nature can be so gorgeous and full of life, Herron’s talent for descriptions has things feeling a lot more bleak, a lot more desolate.

We start with River facing familial turmoil and tragedy; learn that Louisa Guy is still taking Min’s death hard; we root for Catherine as she wobbles in her fight against alcoholism; and see Diana Taverner’s first tenure as First Desk (it isn’t easy!)

We also have a new Slow Horse, Lech Wicinski, who finds himself in Slough House for one of the worst crimes of all; yet throughout the book he repeatedly refutes this fact and claims his innocence. I wasn’t sure what to think of Lech at first, although I admit I was adverse to staying neutral about him considering his charge, and so leaned a wee bit more strongly on the side of accusation. Which only goes to show again the genius of Herron’s writing, and of his ability to weave characters and their morals together as they meander through this complex little thing called life.

Lamb, ever the glorious one, gets more heavily involved in the lives of his Joes, and goes to bat for them more explicitly than ever before. It’s magnificient to see. We have the great joy of watching him even threaten people – and then follow through! I lived for the days where Lamb would stand up for his Joes by taking severe action. And I loved how Lamb did it in Joe Country. I felt that it was about time that Regents Park put some respect on his name and the incredible danger that he actually, fully poses.

Having said that, Herron has also begun winding into his books gradual concern over Lamb’s health – something that I don’t actually want to even consider. Ever. So far, Catherine is the only one that has seen him be vulnerable, and I wonder how the other Slow Horses will react when they see Lamb struggling and in pain.

It’s also, by the way, subplot galore in Joe Country. One such subplot involves the quite shocking actions of a royal – though not surprising, to be honest. I won’t expand more on it, but how we learned what happened; how our characters converged in the finale; and how the different storylines tied in together, was very, very satisfactory.

There’s an easy suspense that Herron creates and threads through his books and it is the fact that no one is safe: there will be losses.

I grow attached to characters, especially in a book series when a character has been with us from the beginning, and I genuinely felt ill at ease at times, fearing who it was that we were going to lose this time.

To put it simply, I was sincerely hoping that what was being laid out before me on the page wouldn’t actually come to pass…

As usual, Herron took me on unexpected twists and turns and I couldn’t put his book down. I’m so glad that I already have the next book on the shelf, Slough House, which I will be reading immediatley on the run up to the sixth season of Slow Horses!

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*When I began writing this review earlier today, I made the mistake of scrolling through social media on a break and saw, to my horror, Lionel Messi’s post about retiring from international football 15 minutes after he’d made it. I swear, it was like I’d been shot. I’ve been wallowing all afternoon, feeling a strange kind of floating emptiness and I ended up finishing this review in tears, omfg. Send help.

I don’t even know why I feel so hollow about it because I was never much a fan of the game, although I always enjoyed watching Leo’s style of play. Now that I think about it, he was the one that made me actually give a damn about football. Watching him play was like magic, and it was bewitching. Holding your breath in anticipation whenever the ball came to his feet felt like second nature. Cheering in jubilation whenever he pulled off the impossible swelled the pride in your chest until you felt as though you were flying. Throughout my childhood, teenage years, and adult life, it seemed as though every other week you’d hear some crazy feat that Messi had pulled off on the field.

He was a constant. A delightful steady presence that I always looked forward to hearing about. Isn’t it bizzare how certain people have this affect? I feel all sorts of hollow now, like there’s a pit in my stomach that I don’t know how to fill.

Thank you, Leo. For the joy and happiness that you brought to so many people on the international stage ♡