Down Cemetery Road by the brilliant Mick Herron

⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑  My author worship of Mick Herron continues to hold firm with this, my first read of his apart from my most beloved Slough House series. A standalone book, this is not, but the start of the Zoe Boehm series (hooray!). Here, we find ourselves in a quiet residential street at an ad hoc dinner party thrown together by extremely bored housewife, Sarah. What begins as an awkward evening ends with a bang as a neighbor's house explodes. Sarah doesn't know the family who lived in the house but feels desirous to know the fate of the sole survivor, a 4 year old girl who seems to have vanished. The quest sends Sarah down a bumpy road into the dark world of secrets spies keep and the great lengths they will go to to avoid public knowledge of their activities.

Down Cemetery Road is a nice twist on the world I've come to know from Slough House. Here, spies are dangerous, unsavory characters killing without thought or hesitation. At Slough House, our spies are mainly newly formed and working for good, not evil. I like the flip side of the coin just as well. Good or bad, Mick Herron's spy universe is rich with detail and a variety of characters to entertain and keep the reader pinned to the page. Off to find book two now that I'm back on the spy wagon...