Name: Nobody Walks
Rating: 5 (4 reviews)
Author: Mick Herron

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Summary

Book Summary

Mick Herron introduces Tom Bettany, a man with a violent past and only one thing to live for: Avenging his son's death.

Tom Bettany is working at a meat processing plant in France when he gets a voicemail from an Englishwoman he doesn't know telling him that his estranged 26-year-old son is dead - Liam Bettany fell from his London balcony, where he was smoking pot.

Now for the first time since he cut all ties years ago, Bettany returns home to London to find out the truth about his son's death. 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.

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Media Reviews

"Starred Review. [A] superb thriller... Herron may be the most literate, and slyest, thriller writer in English today." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. Herron's remarkable novel has enough suspense, action, and deductive dazzlement to keep genre fans happy. But be warned: these are deep waters, and this is not nodding-off, night-table reading." - Booklist

"The Brits seem to have a lock on clapped-out intelligence agents, and this savvy literary stand-alone by the author of the 2013 Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger–winning Dead Lions is an affectionate nod to the likes of John le Carré." - Library Journal

"Herron strips his revenge story to the bone, paring away unnecessary characters, episodes, speeches and gestures to produce a violent little elegy that grows both more clever and more sour as it hurtles along." - Kirkus

This information about Nobody Walks was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Reader Reviews

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Cloggie Downunder

Outstanding British crime fiction.
Nobody Walks is the second stand-alone novel by award-winning British author, Mick Herron. Tom Bettany barely makes it back to London for his son, Liam’s funeral. They were estranged for four years, Tom was out of the country, and a colleague of Liam’s rang to let him know. The calls from the police had been more vague, but when he arrived, DS Welles told him that Liam’s death was accidental: high on a particularly potent type of dope, he fell off his balcony.

Tom, though, had been ex-Service before he severed all ties and, at his son’s flat, something sets off an alarm bell for him. He is soon convinced that Liam was murdered, and is determined to find out who is responsible. But his questions are upsetting quite a few people, and equipping himself with the necessary announces his return the crime bosses whose long incarceration he effected during his “joe” days.

Then someone on high at Regent’s Park sends young J.K. Coe (unofficially) with a message: a “do not disturb” on one name, an implication of responsibility for another. The source alone flags the information with a high index of suspicion, so Bettany sets out to verify, while ensuring to stay under the radar of the various parties eager to get up close and physical with him.

Fans of the Jackson Lamb series will be pleased to know that this story is set in the same universe, with at least six names known from that series playing roles or rating mentions here, one of whom comprehensively proves that the fate meted out to them in a later book is absolutely a just desert, if insufficiently punitive.

Coe was introduced in the novella, The List, and took his place in Slough House in Spook Street; in this novel, the reader learns the details of the ordeal that landed him under Jackson Lamb’s supervision. Once again, Herron produces a fast-paced crime novel with twists and red herrings to keep the reader guessing and the pages turning right up to the jaw-dropping revelations of the final chapters. Outstanding British crime fiction.

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Author Information

Biography
Books by this Author

Mick Herron Author Biography

Mick Herron is a British novelist and short story writer who was born in Newcastle and studied English at Oxford. He is the author of the Slough House espionage series (soon to be an Apple TV+ show starring Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas), four Oxford mysteries, and several standalone novels. His work has won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, the Steel Dagger for Best Thriller, and the Ellery Queen Readers Award, and been nominated for the Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and Theakstons Novel of the Year Awards. He currently lives in Oxford and writes full-time.

Link to Mick Herron's Website