London Rules, by Mick Herron

Moscow rules say watch your back; London rules say cover your arse. MI5 dumping ground Slough House apparently loses one of its Slow Horse agents in unfortunate circumstances in each book. The early candidate here is obnoxious techie Roddy Ho, who is targeted from the start. This comes to the attention of the thoroughbreds of Regent’s Park when it is linked to a terrorist attack on an English village. The investigation of who is behind it stretches to Birmingham and to the actual town of Slough, where a comedy of errors facilitates a political assassination rather than preventing it. Often a step ahead of their Regents’ Park superiors, the Slow Horses swing wildly between heroics and fuck-ups. As usual their execrable leader Jackson Lamb operates on Moscow Rules to ensure the continued existence of his team. This time it leads to handing arch enemy Diana Taverner a weapon to secure her power that seems likely to come back to bite him. The sardonic humour is laugh-out-loud in places and there is joy in identifying thinly disguised political figures, especially from the populist right, and speculating on the accuracy of their depiction. This tale ends on several cliffhangers, likely to reverberate in the next instalment.