The 19th book I read in 2023 was ‘Spook Street’ by Mick Herron. This is book #4 in Herron’s brilliant ‘Slough House’ series that has now become mainstream due to the excellent show, Slow Horses. In Spook Street our heroes deal with terrorists and long-standing agents and their unholy entanglements. This time Herron weaves humor, humanity, intrigue, and danger into a theme that is entertaining but decidedly bleaker.

I think I enjoyed the last book, Real Tigers, more. However, by now the characters are so well-known and endearing that the plot is almost secondary.

I’ve usually used my own photos for my posts. However, lately I’ve started experimenting with generating book-inspired images using ChatGPT. Their DALL-E engine sometimes comes up with interesting stuff. I particularly liked its rendering of this bleak London scene.