The Irregular: A Different Class of Spy
A captivating spy thriller in the world of Sherlock Holmes
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- €3.49
Publisher Description
SPY HUNTER SHORTLISTED FOR THE SPYMASTERS BEST ESPIONAGE NOVEL OF 2025, ALONGSIDE THE PEACOCK AND THE SPARROW BY I.S. BERRY AND GABRIEL'S MOON BY WILLIAM BOYD
'Irresistible' Guardian
'Impressive' Daily Mail
'Captivating' Mick Herron
Nominated for the 2018 Best First Novel, Barry Award
London, 1909
Captain Kell of the War Office knows the Empire is under threat - from Russia and Germany, from terrorists and anarchists, spies and infiltrators.
But he can't prove it to his superiors. He needs an agent he can trust, someone who knows the street, not the playing fields of Eton.
Kell needs Wiggins. Trained as a child by Kell's old friend Sherlock Holmes, who used to call his little band of urchins the Baker Street Irregulars, Wiggins is now an ex soldier with an expert line in deduction and the cunning of a bare-knuckle fighter.
But he has no wish to be recruited - until he sees a route to taking his sworn revenge on the killer of his best friend.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lyle's ambitious first novel, a Sherlock Holmes spin-off with a fresh angle, centers on the events leading to the establishment of the British Secret Service. In 1909, Holmes recommends Wiggins, who was the leader of the Baker Street Irregulars as a boy and is now scratching out a living as a debt-collector, to Vernon Kell, the head of a counterespionage unit for the War Office. Wiggins at first refuses to work for Kell, but he changes his mind after his closest friend, a police constable, is gunned down while attempting to apprehend two robbers and he finds evidence, in the form of a "small brass eight-pointed star, inlaid with red enamel," that makes him doubt the official theory of the crime. Kell is eager to have Wiggins's assistance in identifying the foreign power he believes funded the criminals. James Bond fans will appreciate that in the end Kell decides to call Wiggins "agent double 0" ("You can call me C," Kell tells him), but others may have a problem with Wiggins's underdeveloped character and a plot that doesn't realize its potential.)
