The Marylebone Drop: A Novella

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Solomon Dortmund can never pick up its menu without feeling that life--even one as long as his--holds some consolati ons; can never put it down again without inner turmoil having rag ed. And then the man, fully recovered, is apologising; the young woman assuring him that the fault is as much hers as his (this is not true); the envelopes are gathered up while the young lady pats at herself, confirming that she still has everything she ought to have; the bag slung over her shoulder, the scarf around her neck. The author’s idiosyncratic writing is unique in his genre: the spycraft of le Carré refracted through the blackly comic vision of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Hi s own telephone is black, with a rotary dial, and lives on a tabl e, but he is one of those rare creatures who recognises that even those technological developments in which he himself has neither interest nor investment might yet be of value to others, and he is perfectly content to allow them to indulge themselves. The Irish Ti mes It's not often a reviewer can say, 'You've never read anyth ing quite like this' but it's a safe encomium to use in the case of Mick Herron.

The Marylebone Drop: A Novella by Mick Herron | Penguin

Such co ntemplation happily consumes the time needed to prepare his choco late, for here comes the waiter already, and soon all is neatly a rranged in front of him: cup, saucer, spoon, napkin; the elements of ritual as important as the beverage itself. The meeting at the Park might well have occurred earlier than the drop on Maryle bone High, but that was a detail only, and when the time came for the whole business to be black-ribboned and consigned to the arc hive, nobody would care that a strip-lit office with functional f urniture had been where the starting pistol was fired. Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone café, he knows he’s witnessed more than an innocent encounter.And his appearance is instantly celebrated: he is greeted by name by a friendly young waiter, he is guided to a table, he is assured that his chocolate has so nearly arrived that he might as well be dabbing a napkin to his lips already.

The Marylebone Drop: A Novella - Apple Books

By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. A moment later, the man is at a table, busying himself with the buttons on his coat; the young woman is at the door, is through it, is gone. But it is a small moment of plea sure in a world more commonly disposed to pain, and is to be trea sured.To anyone watching as he heads for the outside world, he is no more than old-fashioned clothing on a sticklike frame; a judgement he would accept without demur. Seasone d Park watchers later said that the affair really began in Fische r's, that beloved café and konditorei that bestows a touch of ear ly twentieth-century Vienna on the foothills of twenty-first-cent ury Marylebone High Street; its warm interior, its spring yellows and glazed browns, a welcome refuge from the winter-drizzled pav ements.