This Is What Happened by Mick Herron
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Be patient. This book starts slow and soon becomes both confusing and implausible. If you hang in there, though, the plot begins to reveal itself about halfway through. This is to say you figure out “what happened.” The storyline is really quite imaginative. Maggie, a naif living alone in London in a menial job, is recruited to help MI-5 in a secret task. She agrees to do it, but things go wrong and she is whisked away to a safe house. That’s enough to get you the idea.
The writing is workmanlike, but uninspiring. The style is somewhat lighthearted, although you wouldn’t call this a comedy by any means. The author manages keep the reader in suspense enough once into the meat of the plot, but I suspect a few readers get bored and drop out before that point. The subtitle on the cover (“A Thriller”) is quite a stretch, I’d say. It isn’t something I’d recommend highly, but it was good enough to be my airplane entertainment when I flew down to Austin for my daughter’s wedding. It could be a “summer beach read.”