Dead Lions

Dead Lions by Mick Herron.

The agents of Slough House investigate the death of an old intelligence operative while handling an assignment involving a Russian oligarch. Mick Herron draws the failed careers of his spies into the unfinished business of the Cold War.

Read it for the gap between an institution's judgment of its people and what those people can actually do. Humor and suspicion make a useful pair of tools for examining professional failure.