Louisa Guy

Who they are

A screen-watcher sent to Slough House after her first field operation went wrong: she lost the target of a gun drop in a clothes shop, and the hijacked weapons reached the streets. She rents a studio flat, keeps the car she drives, and has spent a year being told she is not the sort of officer things happen to.

What they want

To be trusted with something again. She is the character most eager to be given an order worth obeying, which is why Lamb’s abandonment hurts her more than it hurts Ho.

Book 1 — Slow Horses

• C01 — Arrives with Min Harper; they have drunk together once.
• C02 — Microwaves a lasagne and remembers the clothes shop.
• C08 — Drinks with Min, kisses him on the stairs, then helps him kill the intruder who turns out to be Jed Moody.
• C11–C12 — Drives the collection run, works out that Lamb would not have sent for the others if he meant to run, and arrives at Ho’s back door.
• C16 — In the café, watches Catherine take charge and bets on her.

Book 2 — Dead Lions

• C01 — Seconded to Webb with Min and reads the audit behind it correctly; she defines a black swan.
• C03 — Counts the cost of a flat too small for two and concludes that she and Min need money more than caution.
• C05 — Tells Min to shut up about Shirley and feels the office turn cold; the row is still open when he dies.
• C07 — Back at work three weeks after Min’s death, on a bargain with Webb: the assignment is all she has left.
• C09 — Dresses for Pashkin, plans to take him alone in his suite, and is disarmed in a cloakroom first.
• C10 — Learns Marcus shadowed her and took her kit; being rescued from her plan is worse than being stopped.
• C15 — Fights down the Needle, faces Pashkin on the roof, and takes a diamond from de Koenig’s floor.
• C16 — Sobs at an untenanted desk with the diamond in her underwear: she keeps the loot, not the consolation.

Book 3 — Real Tigers

• C01 — Drinks alone south of the river and takes a stranger home on her own terms: silent until she has finished.
• C02–C03 — Lets herself into Catherine’s flat with the spare keys and refuses the theory that Catherine is drinking again.
• C05–C06 — Refuses to leave without an answer, and gets Lamb to make his call; his verdict on the house is that they are fuck-ups who got lucky.
• C07–C08 — Brings the house the dumped body and Judd’s silence, and is told she is behaving strangely for it.
• C09 — Cracks the conspiracy boards and produces BigSeanD; asks River why he sits with the man she blames for Min Harper’s death.
• C10–C11 — Insists they were followed, negotiates Catherine’s release with Sean Donovan, and talks the caretaker into opening a classified facility.
• C13–C14 — Shoots three men to get River back, takes the folder out of Donovan’s shirt, and refuses his praise.
• C15–C16 — Leaves Donovan his gun, bluffs an Arrow with a pistol she is not sure is loaded, and ends in a bar turning down the usual approach.

She does the tracing, the negotiating and most of the killing, and refuses the one compliment she gets. The book never says whether that is integrity or habit.

Book 4 — Spook Street

• C01 — Describes her new flat to River Cartwright and tries to head off whatever he is working up to saying; the flat is the diamond from The Needle, sold.
• C02 — Drinks with River in a pub near the church where Shakespeare in Love was filmed and hears the truth about his father and the O.B.
• C04 — Refuses the news three times, leaves, comes back and nearly attacks Moira Tregorian, then fastens on Lamb’s wording — Cartwright’s body — as possible proof that the dead man is the grandfather.
• C05 — Presses Lamb about River, throws a stapler at JK Coe, and is put on the hunt for the O.B.’s French connection.
• C08 — Chases Sam Chapman through the backstreets, walks into the garage forecourt alone, takes a crowbar thrown at her head, and is knocked down and kicked in the hip by Patrice before Marcus drives a cab through the gates.
• C09 — Soaks her ankles in a washing-up bowl while the failed snatch is relived around her and Marcus lies about the cab.
• C11 — Pulls on socks and drives to the closed Pentonville Road scene, names Patrice for Emma Flyte, and warns her he may go after Cartwright next.
• C12 — Drinks with Flyte and stays close to her for news of River, hearing Taverner order the Dog back to the safe house instead.
• C14 — Learns from Lamb that Marcus Longridge is dead, drives to Blackfriars Bridge, strips off her coat and goes into the Thames after River, then tells him to pick up a phone in future.

Book 5 — London Rules

• C01 — Cross-checking library loan records, the office’s only real work before the attacks start.
• C02 — Doubts the attempt on Ho and warns Shirley about going behind Lamb’s back, then agrees to help.
• C04 — Follows Ho to Stockwell and takes the driving; argues Kim is running a scam.
• C06 — Sent to Birmingham with Shirley, playing Yellow Car on the way to a job neither of them believes in.
• C07 — Inside Jaffrey’s library meeting, studying the audience while Shirley keeps the car and the monkey wrench.
• C08 — Drives back from Birmingham doubting Shirley’s account of armed men in a van.
• C10 — Opens the drawer Kim is hiding behind and is knocked over a broken mug for it.
• C13 — Meets River at Storey’s Gate, present for the day the Service protects the wrong building.

Book 6 — Joe Country

• C01 — Answers Min Harper’s old phone because it has rung five times and Lamb is bellowing. Clare Addison introduces herself as Clare Harper as was, and says she was Min’s wife.
• C02 — Meets Clare in Soho and tells her Lucas left of his own accord and will come back: a refusal dressed as reassurance. Clare leaves her with the accusation that sleeping with Min ought to have counted for something, which is the obligation that runs the rest of her book.
• C06 — Has Roderick Ho trace the Fitbit and learns it is in Pegsea. Decides she is due a stupid idea, checks the snow forecast and packs.
• C07 — Drives into Wales, finds the cottage dark, and goes down to the crossroads with a monkey wrench. The three men briefed to kill her if she turns up are a mile outside town, and she does not know they exist.
• C11 — Hears Lucas’s account of the crossbow party in full and supplies the reason he never went to the police: the men he saw included a royal and a former Home Secretary. Goes out with stones in her hands and finds a fox.
• C12 — Agrees Emma should walk into town for the police and proposes swapping coats. The swap is why, in C13, she identifies her own white ski jacket before she identifies the woman under it.
• C13 — Finds Emma Flyte shot through the chest off the track, loses Lucas, and then fronts Harkness on the High Street by tapping a breast pocket she has nothing in. He nods and walks away.
• C14 — Offstage and reported: she has spoken to Lucas and to his mother, tells River she is fine, and is carrying the deaths as her own fault.

Tells

Practical, blunt, the one who says the obvious thing the men are avoiding. Her competence is unshowy and constantly under-credited by the Service — the book’s quietest argument about how people get sent to Slough House.

Open questions

Whether she and Min were anything — Dead Lions settles that by killing him. Whether being right about Lamb earns her anything at all.