The Lambeth Group is a private intelligence organization.
That is almost certainly an inaccuracy but coming up with a quick one-liner to explain it has proven challenging. Luckily the author of the recorded adventures about this group, and more particularly two of its operatives, provided in the first of those tales a short but descriptive explanation.
"During the early 1990s, rapid progress in technology brought increased public fears that science would gallop out of control. UK politicians became concerned science and technology could damage business, and endanger human life.
"The Lambeth Group came into being when a group of twenty-six university vice-chancellors, from elite universities met secretly with Home Office mandarins at the Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London, to formulate a covert doomwatch policing strategy for protection of the country from criminal, unethical, unprincipled scientists, and technologists.
"Sir Christopher Aden-Brown, Group leader, is based in the Peel Building at the Home Office in Marsham Street, London. He provides expert liaison and counsel between the Home Office and university vice-chancellors in the UK and Commonwealth."
That description goes on to give background information on those two operatives mentioned before:
Gavin Shawlens, bioscience investigator, joined the Lambeth Group six years ago. As a natural cover agent, Gavin uses his genuine profession as cover for clandestine work. In return for his expertise on investigations, he receives funding for his enzyme technology research team. A loner, reluctant, skeptical, and lacking confidence in spy business. Gavin is the least experienced link in the team.
Zoe Tampsin is an ex-army captain, and section leader for the Security Service (MI5). She served in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and successfully completed undercover security operations at home and various hotspots abroad. Her CO wrote into her record; 'Zoe Tampsin protects her troop like a lioness protecting her cubs, powerful, determined, and completely ruthless.'
A very telling comment is made in one of the later books regarding the working relationship between sometime Lambeth Group operative Gavin Shawlens and his occasional boss in that organization, Zoe Tampsin: "They were friends, but ... Before she joined the Lambeth Group, the work he did for them didn't stretch him and didn't put him in danger." The upshot of that line is that once she appeared in the picture in the first adventure, his life is constantly being in peril.
Even more telling is: "The jobs he did with Zoe gave him nightmares."
Since there have been a lot of jobs, that is a wide array of bad dreams.
Good Line:
- Tag line for one of the adventures: "If you fear trouble, don't get into trouble".