Real Tigers (Slough House, #3)

by Mick Herron

The only reason for the absence of a sign requiring entrants to abandon all hope is that, as every office worker knows, it’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you that kills you.

navigating the staircase with the grace of a hippopotamus steering a wheelbarrow.

And nothing would give Shirley greater pleasure than to rise like a phoenix from one of that bastard’s mattress fires;

“If I’m not back in twenty minutes, do something.” “. . . Like what?” “Well I don’t fucking know, do I? Google ‘cunning plan,’ see what the internet suggests.”