Mick Herron

Slough House is a dumping ground for British intelligence agents who’ve screwed up a case in any number of ways—by leaving a secret file on a train or blowing a surveillance. River Cartwright, one such “slow horse,” is bitter about his failure and about his tedious assignment transcribing cell phone conversations. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself. Is the victim who he first appears to be? And what’s the kidnappers’ connection with a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River finds that everyone has his own agenda.

Tom Bettany is working at a meat processing plant in France when he gets a voicemail from an Englishwoman he doesn't know telling him that his estranged 26-year-old son is dead--Liam Bettany fell from his London balcony, where he was smoking dope. Now for the first time since he cut all ties years ago, Bettany returns home to London to find out the truth about his son's death. Maybe it's the guilt he feels about losing touch with his son that's gnawing at him, or maybe he's actually put his finger on a labyrinthine plot, but either way he'll get to the bottom of the tragedy, no matter whose feathers he has to ruffle. But more than a few people are interested to hear Bettany is back in town, from incarcerated mob bosses to those in the highest echelons of MI5. He might have thought he'd left it all behind when he first skipped town, but nobody really just walks away.

London's Slough House is where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what's left of their failed careers. The "slow horses," as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. Maybe they messed up an op badly and can't be trusted anymore. Maybe they got in the way of an ambitious colleague and had the rug yanked out from under them. Maybe they just got too dependent on the bottle—not unusual in this line of work. One thing they all have in common, though, is they all want to be back in the action. And most of them would do anything to get there─even if it means having to collaborate with one another.Now the slow horses have a chance at redemption. An old Cold War-era spy is found dead on a bus outside Oxford, far from his usual haunts. The despicable, irascible Jackson Lamb is convinced Dickie Bow was murdered. As the agents dig into their fallen comrade's circumstances, they uncover a shadowy tangle of ancient Cold War secrets that seem to lead back to a man named Alexander Popov, who is either a Soviet bogeyman or the most dangerous man in the world. How many more people will have to die to keep those secrets buried?

Slough House is the Intelligence Service outpost for failed spies, former high-fliers now dubbed the 'slow horses'. Catherine Standish, one of their number, worked in Regent's Park long enough to understand treachery, double-dealing and stabbing in the back, and she's known Jackson Lamb long enough to have learned that old sins cast long shadows. And she also knows that chance encounters never happen to spooks, even recovering drunks whose careers have crashed and burned.What she doesn't know is why anyone would target her.So whoever's holding her hostage, it can't be personal. It must be about Slough House. Most likely, it's about Jackson Lamb. And say what you like about Lamb, he'll never leave a joe in the lurch.He might even be someone you could trust with your life.

A shakeup at MI5 and a terrorist attack on British soil set in motion clandestine machinery known to few modern spies. David Cartwright isn't a modern spy, however; he's legend and a bonafide Cold War hero. He's also in his dotage and losing his mind to Alzheimer's. His stories of stoats hiding in the bushes, following his every move have been dismissed by friends and family for years. Cartwright may be losing track of reality but he's certain about one thing: Old spooks don't go quietly and neither do the secrets they keep. What happens when an old spook loses his mind? Does the Service have a retirement home for those who know too many secrets but don't remember they're secret? Or does someone take care of the senile spy for good? These are the questions River Cartwright must ask when his grandfather, a Cold War-era operative, starts to forget to wear pants and begins to suspect everyone in his life has been sent by the Home Office to watch him. But River has other things to worry about. A bomb has detonated in the middle of a busy shopping center and killed forty innocent civilians. The agents of Slough House have to figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates.

The fifth entry in CWA Gold dagger-winning Slough House series.London Rules might not be written down, but everyone knows rule one: Cover your arse.At MI5 headquarters Regent's Park, First Desk Claude Whelan is learning this the hard way. Tasked with protecting a beleaguered prime minister, he's facing attack from all directions himself: from the showboating MP who orchestrated the Brexit vote, and now has his sights set on Number Ten; from the showboat's wife, a tabloid columnist, who's crucifying Whelan in print; from the PM's favorite Muslim, who's about to be elected mayor of the West Midlands, despite the dark secret he's hiding; and especially from his own deputy, Lady Di Taverner, who's alert for Claude's every stumble. Meanwhile, the country's being rocked by an apparently random string of terror attacks. Over at Slough House, the MI5 satellite office for outcast and demoted spies, the agents are struggling with personal problems: repressed grief, various addictions, retail paralysis, and the nagging suspicion that their newest colleague is a psychopath. Plus someone is trying to kill Roddy Ho. But collectively, they're about to rediscover their greatest strength - that of making a bad situation much, much worse.

If Spook Street is where spies live, Joe Country is where they go to die. In Slough House, the London outpost for disgraced MI5 spies, memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him an outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process. Meanwhile, in Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she’s going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil . . . And with winter taking its grip, Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can’t ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible for killing a slow horse breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score.

Brexit is in full swing. And due to mysterious accidents, the Slough Houses ranks continue to thin. The seventh entry to the Slough House series is as thrilling and bleeding-edge relevant as ever.A year after a calamitous blunder by the Russian secret service left a British citizen dead from novichok poisoning, Diana Taverner is on the warpath. What seems a gutless response from the government has pushed the Service's First Desk into mounting her own counter-offensive—but she's had to make a deal with the devil first. And given that the devil in question is arch-manipulator Peter Judd, she could be about to lose control of everything she's fought for.Meanwhile, still reeling from recent losses, the slow horses are worried they've been pushed further into the cold. Slough House has been wiped from Service records, and fatal accidents keep happening. No wonder Jackson Lamb's crew are feeling paranoid. But have they actually been targeted? With a new populist movement taking a grip on London's streets, and the old order ensuring that everything's for sale to the highest bidder, the world's an uncomfortable place for those deemed surplus to requirements. The wise move would be to find a safe place and wait for the troubles to pass.But the slow horses aren't famed for making wise decisions. And with enemies on all sides, not even Jackson Lamb can keep his crew from harm.

A governmental think-tank, whose remit is to curb the independence of the intelligence service, has lost one of its key members, and Claude Whelan—one-time head of MI5's Regent’s Park—is tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads straight back to the Park itself, with Diana Taverner as chief suspect. Has Diana overplayed her hand at last? What’s her counterpart, Moscow’s First Desk, doing in London? And does Jackson Lamb know more than he’s telling? Over at Slough House, with Shirley Dander in rehab, Roddy Ho in dress rehearsal, and new recruit Ashley Khan turning up the heat, the slow horses are doing what they do best, and adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation . . . There are bad actors everywhere, and they usually get their comeuppance before the credits roll. But politics is a dirty business, and in a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing are the norm, sometimes the good guys can find themselves outgunned.

Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service. Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. Now the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust—and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away by the pounding London rain.Until the eve of Monochrome’s shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin—an operation that ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history.The Secret Hours is a dazzling entry point into Mick Herron’s body of work, a standalone spy thriller that is at once unnerving, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny. It is also the breathtaking secret history that Slough House fans have been waiting for.

CWA Gold Dagger winner Mick Herron's debut novel introduces Sarah Tucker, whose search for a missing child unravels a murderous conspiracy. When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a young girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah Tucker—a young married woman, bored and unhappy with domestic life—becomes obsessed with finding her. Accustomed to dull chores in a childless household and hosting her husband’s wearisome business clients for dinner, Sarah suddenly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew, as her investigation reveals that people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead. What begins in a peaceful neighborhood reaches its climax on a remote, unwelcoming Scottish island as the search puts Sarah in league with a man who finds himself being hunted down by murderous official forces.

Dieter Hess, an aged spy, is dead, and John Bachelor, his MI5 handler, is in deep, deep trouble. Death has revealed that deceased had been keeping a secret second bank account—and there’s only ever one reason a spy has a secret second bank account. The question of whether he was a double agent must be resolved, and its answer may undo an entire career’s worth of spy secrets.

THE NINTH BOOK IN THE SERIES BEHIND SLOW HORSES, AN APPLE ORIGINAL SERIES NOW STREAMING ON APPLE TV+Jackson Lamb and the bad spies of Slough House are caught in a deadly battle between MI5’s secret past and its murky future in this gripping, hilarious, and heartbreaking thriller by Mick Herron.“Old spies grow ridiculous, River. Old spies aren’t much better than clowns.” Or so David Cartwright, the late retired head of MI5, used to tell his grandson. He forgot to add that old spies can be dangerous, too, especially if they’ve fallen on hard times—as River Cartwright is about to learn the hard way.David Cartwright, long buried, has left his library to the Spooks’ College in Oxford, and now one of the books is missing. Or perhaps it never existed. River, once a “slow horse” of Slough House, MI5’s outpost for demoted and disgraced spies, has some time to kill while awaiting medical clearance to return to work, and starts investigating the secrets of his grandfather’s library.Over at the Park, MI5 First Desk Diana Taverner is in a pickle. An operation carried out during the height of the Troubles laid bare the ugly side of state security, and those involved are threatening to expose details. But every threat hides an opportunity, and Taverner has come up with a scheme. All she needs is the right dupe to get caught holding the bag.Jackson Lamb, the enigmatic and odiferous head of Slough House, has no plans to send in the clowns. On the other hand, if the clowns ignore his instructions, any harm that befalls them is hardly his fault. But they’re his clowns. And if they don’t all make it home, there’ll be a reckoning.

At last in one volume: the collected Slough House spy novellas, including the never-before-published Christmas interlude Standing by the Wall.Espionage. Blackmail. Revenge. Cunning. Slapstick. State secrets dating back to the fall of the Berlin Wall. All this and more in a tight package of five novellas by Mick Herron, CWA Gold Dagger–winning author of Slow Horses. From the troubled recruitment of a new MI5 informant to a botched information transfer, Herron’s novellas capture the drama, humor, and high stakes of everyday life in the world of spycraft, a world rife with both legends and secrets, where thrill-seeking and loneliness are ubiquitous and deadly, and where the lines between friends, enemies, and lovers are perpetually blurred by circumstance and subterfuge.For fans new and old, Standing by the Wall is an excellent introduction to the extended literary universe of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses.The List (Slough House #2.5)The Marylebone Drop (Slough House #5.5)The Last Dead Letter (Slough House #6.4)The Catch (Slough House #6.5)Standing by the Wall (Slough House #8.5)

Set in the same world as the Slough House series, this explosive novella by bestselling spy-master Mick Herron, is a treat for his massive fan base.John Bachelor is the saddest kind of spy: not a joe in the field, not even a desk jockey, but a milkman—a part-time pension administrator whose main job is to check in on aging retired spies. Late in his career and having lost his wife, his house, and his savings after a series of unlucky choices, John’s been living in a dead man’s London apartment, hoping the bureaucracy isn’t going to catch up with him and leave him homeless. But keeping a secret among spies is a fool’s errand, and now John has made himself eminently blackmailable.

Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone café, he knows he's witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly, he sets in train events which will alter lives. Bachelor himself, a hair's breadth away from sleeping in his car, is clawing his way back to stability; Hannah Weiss, the double agent whose recruitment was his only success, is starting to enjoy the secrets and lies her role demands; and Lech Wicinski, an Intelligence Service analyst, finds that a simple favour for an old acquaintance might derail his career. Meanwhile, Lady Di Taverner is trying to keep the Service on an even keel, and if that means throwing the odd crew member overboard, well: collateral damage is her speciality.A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information.It's also what happens just before you hit the ground.

From CWA Gold Dagger winner Mick Herron comes a shocking, twisted novel of psychological suspense about one woman’s attempt to be better than ordinaryTwenty-six-year-old Maggie Barnes is someone you would never look at twice. Living alone in a month-to-month sublet in the huge city of London, with no family but an estranged sister, no boyfriend or partner, and not much in the way of friends, Maggie is just the kind of person who could vanish from the face of the earth without anyone taking notice.Or just the kind of person MI5 needs to infiltrate the establishment and thwart an international plot that puts all of Britain at risk.Now one young woman has the chance to be a hero—if she can think quickly enough to stay alive.

Oxford private investigator Zoë Boehm struggles with the aftereffects of her violent past as she hunts for a killer—or has she become the hunted?Zoë Boehm has harbored a distinct aversion to death ever since she shot the man intent on killing her. So when Caroline Daniels takes a deadly fall in front of a train and her lover fails to turn up at the funeral, Zoë wants nothing to do with the case. But Caroline’s boss is persistent, and as Zoë attempts to unlock the secrets of a woman she’s never met while in search of a man who could be anywhere, she starts to wonder if he’s found her first. And if he has, will that make her the next victim, or prove to be her salvation from a paralyzing fear?

What should have been a simple pick-up turns into a day-long nightmare for Bad Sam Chapman.When an operational catastrophe puts a gun in the hands of a young man, who then breaks into South Oxford Nursery School and takes a group of hostages, teacher Louise Kennedy fears the worst. But Jaime Segura isn't there on a homicidal mission, and he's just as scared as those whose lives he holds as collateral. As an armed police presence builds outside the school's gates, Bad Sam Chapman - head of the intelligence service's internal security force, the Dogs - battles the clock to find out what Jaime is after. But the only person Jaime will talk to is Ben Whistler, an MI6 accountant who worked with Jaime's lover, Miro. Miro's gone missing, along with a quarter of a billion pounds allotted for reconstruction work in Iraq. Jaime refuses to believe that Miro is a thief - though he's always had his secrets. But then, so does Louise, so do the other hostages - and so do some people on the outside, who'd much rather Jaime was silenced.

Now, for the first time, Mick Herron’s short fiction has been collected into one volume. In Dolphin Junction, devoted fans and future converts alike will find much to amuse, delight, and terrify them. Five standalone nerve-rackingly thrilling crime fiction stories are complemented by four mystery stories featuring the Oxford wife-and-husband detective team of shrewd Zoë Boehm and hapless Joe Silvermann. The collection also includes a peek into the past of Jackson Lamb, irascible top agent at Slough House.

Oxford private detective Zoë Boehm turns up dead in Newcastle, launching her friend Sarah Tucker into an investigation with several leads—but no one she can trust. When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as private detective Zoë Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zoë kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her? Why was she wearing the jacket a murderer had stolen years before? And what’s brought Sarah’s former sparring partner Gerard Inchon to the same broken-down hotel where she’s staying? Coincidence is an excuse that soon appears pretty unconvincing. Sarah can’t leave until she’s found the answers to her questions, however dangerous they might turn out to be.

The road to hell is paved with all sorts of intentions, as Oxford private investigator Zoë Boehm discovers when a straightforward jewelry store robbery turns out to be anything but. When Zoë Boehm agrees to track down the gang who knocked over Sweeney’s jewelry shop, she’s just hoping to break even in time for tax season. She certainly doesn’t expect to wind up in a coffin. But she’s about to become entangled with a strange collection of characters, starting with suicidal Tim Whitby, who’s dedicating what’s left of his life to protecting the pretty, battered Katrina Blake from her late husband’s sociopathic brothers, Arkle and Trent.Unfortunately for Zoë, Arkle has a crossbow, Tim has nothing left to lose, and even Katrina has her secrets. And death, like taxes, can’t be avoided forever.

Two Slough House Novellas **THE DROP** 'It is time Mick Herron was recognised in his own right as the best thriller writer in Britain today' Sunday Express Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone cafe, he knows he's witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly, he sets in train events which will alter lives. Bachelor himself, a hair's breadth away from sleeping in his car, is clawing his way back to stability; Hannah Weiss, the double agent whose recruitment was his only success, is starting to enjoy the secrets and lies her role demands; and Lech Wicinski, an Intelligence Service analyst, finds that a simple favour for an old acquaintance might derail his career. Meanwhile, Lady Di Taverner is trying to keep the Service on an even keel, and if that means throwing the odd crew member overboard, well: collateral damage is her speciality.A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information.It's also what happens just before you hit the ground. **THE LIST** 'Mick Herron is an incredible writer and if you haven't read him yet, you NEED to' Mark Billingham Dieter Hess, an aged spy, is dead, and John Bachelor, his MI5 handler, is in deep, deep trouble. Death has revealed that the deceased had been keeping a secret second bank account - and there's only ever one reason a spy has a secret second bank account. The question of whether he was a double agent must be resolved, and its answer may undo an entire career's worth of spy secrets.**previously published as two separate editions**

Collection of Books 1-6 in the Slough House series:Book 1: Slow HorsesBook 2: Dead LionsBook 3: Real TigersBook 4: Spook StreetBook 5: London RulesBook 6: Joe Country

Spooks are supposed to be stealthy . . . But those who make a noisy mess of their careers end up in Slough House.This is Jackson Lamb's kingdom: a dumping ground for spies who've screwed up. Once high fliers, they're now slow horses, condemned to a life of pushing paper as punishment for crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal. In drab and mildewed offices, these highly trained spies moan and squabble, stare at the walls, and dream of better days - not one of them joined the Intelligence Service to be a slow horse, and the one thing they have in common is their desire to be back in the action.Includes Slow Horses, Dead Lions, and Real Tigers.

Bonus short story in the Slough House series included in deluxe tenth anniversary edition of Slow Horses.

A group of mall Santas celebrating Christmas Eve discover that there is a stranger in their midst."The Usual Santas" appears in Mick Herron's collection DOLPHIN JUNCTION, published by Soho Press (US) and John Murray (UK), 2021.

Five stories of crime and suspense.In All The Livelong Day, a couple on a walking holiday in Derbyshire find their relationship tested to breaking point when they stumble into a Hitchcockian nightmare: foul weather, a remote farmhouse, and a monstrous flock of birds...Elsewhere in this collection, casual conversation in a motorway cafe comes close to unmasking pure evil, a dozen jolly Santa Clauses plot the perfect robbery, and Oxford PI Zoe Boehm investigates crimes of real love and imaginary murder, helped and hindered in equal measure by her partner, Joe Silvermann.

Spooks are supposed to be stealthy . . . But those who make a noisy mess of their careers end up in Slough House.This is Jackson Lamb's kingdom: a dumping ground for spies who've screwed up. Once high fliers, they're now slow horses, condemned to a life of pushing paper as punishment for crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal. In drab and mildewed offices, these highly trained spies moan and squabble, stare at the walls, and dream of better days - not one of them joined the Intelligence Service to be a slow horse, and the one thing they have in common is their desire to be back in the action.Includes Slow HorsesDead LionsReal TigersSpook StreetLondon RulesJoe CountrySlough HouseBad Actors