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.

In his best and most ambitious novel yet, Mick Herron, “the le Carré of the future” (BBC), offers an unsparing look at the corrupt web of media, global finance, spycraft, and politics that power our modern world. “This is a darker, scarier Herron. The gags are still there but the satire's more biting. The privatization of a secret service op and the manipulation of news is relevant and horribly credible.”—Ann Cleeves, author of the Vera Stanhope seriesAt Slough House—MI5’s London depository for demoted spies—Brexit has taken a toll. The “slow horses” have been pushed further into the cold, Slough House has been erased from official records, and its members are dying in unusual circumstances, at an unusual clip. No wonder Jackson Lamb's crew is feeling paranoid. But are they actually targets?   With a new populist movement taking hold of London's streets and the old order...

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.

Mick Herron, “the le Carré of the future” (BBC), expands his world of bad spies with an even shadier cast of characters: the politicians, lobbyists, and misinformation agents pulling the levers of government policy. “Confirms Mick Herron as the best spy novelist now working.”—NPR's Fresh Air Now an Apple TV+ series starring Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas.In London's MI5 headquarters a scandal is brewing that could disgrace the entire intelligence community. The Downing Street superforecaster—a specialist who advises the Prime Minister's office on how policy is likely to be received by the electorate—has disappeared without a trace. Claude Whelan, who was once head of MI5, has been tasked with tracking her down.  But the trail leads him straight back to Regent's Park itself, with First Desk Diana Taverner as chief suspect. ...

Praise for Mick Herron: " An] assured mystery. . . . Herron does a nice job of planting red herrings and making his heroine's amateur sleuthing plausible."--"Publishers Weekly" "In "Smoke and Whispers," Herron has spun an intricate, suspenseful web. . . . Meticulously weaves seemingly disparate strands into a stunning finale. . . . A nicely crafted, suspenseful plot, an empathetic heroine and victim, and some really scary people. A very good read."--"Deadly Pleasures" " A] superb investigative thriller."--"Midwest Book Review" "Electrifying."--Mystery Books News "Atmospheric, full of surprises, with some pools of seductive prose."--"ForeWord Magazine" 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 Zoe Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zoe kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her? Why was she wearing a jacket a murderer had stolen years before? And what's brought Sarah's sparring partner, Gerard Inchon, to the same broken-down hotel? Coincidence is an excuse that soon looks pretty unconvincing. Sarah can't leave until she's found the answers to her questions, however dangerous that might turn out to be. Mick Herron is the author of five successful titles. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne and a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, he has a degree in English. A resident of Oxford, Mick works in London on future novels and writes book reviews.

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 for MI5, he sets in motion a train of events that will alter lives. A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information.It's also what happens just before you hit the ground.

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 Carter, 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.From the Hardcover edition.

From CWA Gold Dagger winner Mick Herron comes a shocking, twisted novel of psychological suspense about one woman's attempt to be better than ordinary Twenty-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.

David Cartwright is a legend of MI5 and a bonifide Cold War hero whose mind is slipping in his dotage. His loved ones have to wonder if the "stotes" hiding in the bushes and following him to the store each day are real or imagined. Only one thing is certain: 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...

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?ReviewPraise for DEAD LIONS“Funny, clever ... Genuinely thrilling. The novel is equally noteworthy for its often lyrical prose.”─Publishers Weekly, STARRED Review“If you like your suspense novels told with a smart dash of wit and sarcasm, filled with lots of twists and turns, Herron's your man.”─Shelf Awareness“[Dead Lions] features some of the twistiest plotlines in crime fiction...[and] is beautifully written but also elegantly structured ... Ever since finishing Slow Horses, I've been waiting for a possible sequel. Now that it's here, I have the pleasure of experiencing it, along with the pang of having finished it.”─International Noir Fiction"Herron provides a dour, twisty spy thriller with something for everyone: part post–Cold War miasma, part James Bond heroics, and elliptical withal." ─Kirkus Reviews"Herron delivers unbeatable entertainment for thriller fans".─Library Journal (starred review)“Dead Lions is at once a finely wrought thriller and a farcical, fiercely pointed tale of political greed and bureaucratic corruption. Mick Herron writes like a dream.”─Open Letters Monthly“Full of style and cynical humor .... Has all the punch-your-lights-out action of a movie thriller.”─Read Me DeadlyPraise for Mick Herron"Mick Herron never tells a suspense story in the expected way ... In Herron's book, there is no hiding under the desk." ─*The New York Times Book Review"Stylish and engaging." ─*The Washington Post"[A] masterful thriller ... The intricate plot, coupled with Herron's breezy writing style, results in superior entertainment that makes most other novels of suspense appear dull and slow-witted by comparison." ─Publishers Weekly, Starred Review"Like a good movie ... grabs the reader from the first page." ─Booklist, Starred ReviewAbout the AuthorMick Herron was born in Newcastle and has a degree in English from Balliol College, Oxford. He is the author of two books in the River Cartwright series, Slow Horses and Dead Lions, as well as a mystery series set in Oxford. He now lives in Oxford and works in London.

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.

Set in the same fictional London as his CWA Gold Dagger Award-winning Slough House series, Mick Herron now introduces Tom Bettany, an ex-spook with a violent past and only one thing to live for: Avenging his son's death. 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...