The List (Slough House, #2.5)

by Mick Herron

Information is a tart—information is anybody’s. It reveals as much about those who impart it as it teaches those who hear. Because information, ever the slut, swings both ways. False information—if you know it’s false—tells you half as much again as the real thing, because it tells you what the other feller thinks you don’t know, while real information, the copper-bottomed truth, is worth its weight in fairy-dust. When you have a source of real information, you ought to forsake all others and snuggle down with it for good. Even though it’ll never work out, because information, first, last and always, is a tart.