Mick Herron

A key member of a Downing Street think-tank has disappeared without a trace. Claude Whelan, one-time First Desk of MI5's Regent's Park, is tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads straight back to Regent's Park HQ itself, with its chief, Diana Taverner, as prime suspect. Meanwhile her Russian counterpart has unexpectedly shown up in London but has slipped under MI5's radar.

Over at Slough House, the home for demoted and embittered spies, the slow horses are doing what they do best: adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation.

In a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing is the norm, bad actors are bending the rules for their own gain. If the slow horses want to change the script, they'll need to get their own act together before the final curtain.  Book 8 of series.

If life in the Intelligence Service has taught John Bachelor anything, it's to keep his head down. Especially now, when he's living rent-free in a dead spook's flat.

So he's not delighted to be woken at dawn by a pair of Regent's Park's heavies, looking for a client he's not seen in years. John doesn't know what secrets Benny Manors has stolen, but they're attracting the wrong attention. And if he's to save his own skin, not to mention safeguard his living arrangements, John has to find Benny before those secrets see the light.

A novella in the Slough House series.

Slow horse River Cartwright is waiting to be passed fit for work. With time to kill, and with his grandfather - a legendary former spy - long dead, River investigates the secrets of the old man's library, and a mysteriously missing book.

Regent's Park's First Desk, Diana Taverner, doesn't appreciate threats. So when those involved in a covert operation during the height of the Troubles threaten to expose the ugly side of state security, Taverner turns blackmail into opportunity.

Over at Slough House, Catherine Standish just wants everyone to play nice. But as far as Jackson Lamb is concerned, the slow horses should all be at their desks.

Because when Taverner starts plotting mischief people get hurt, and Lamb has no plans to send in the clowns. On the other hand, if the clowns ignore his instructions and fool around, any harm that befalls them is hardly his fault…

Book 9 in the Slough House series.

London's Slough House is where disgraced MI5 spies go to finish their washed-up careers. Now they have a chance at redemption. An old Cold War-era spy is found dead on a bus outside Oxford, far from his usual haunts. Jackson Lamb soon uncovers a shadowy tangle of ancient Cold War secrets. How many people will have to die to keep those secrets buried?  Book 2 of series

When a man's wife leaves him under suspicious circumstances, he sets off in search for her, unprepared for the guilty secrets he's about to drag back into the light.

A man is tempted by a luxury apartment with a top-of-the-range kitchen. But there is a heavy price to pay for this glamorous new life.

And a couple with their marriage on the rocks go on a hike through the Derbyshire countryside as another way to avoid their real problems.

Hailed as the master of the modern spy thriller, Mick Herron's skill for tension, humour, and memorable twists are captured in his short stories, collected here for the first time.

Sarah Tucker - a young married woman, bored and unhappy with her life - becomes obsessed with trying to find the little girl who disappears after a neighbouring house is destroyed by a massive explosion. What begins in suburban Oxford ends on a Scottish island as the hunt for the missing child takes Sarah out of her marriage and onto a journey with a troubled ex-soldier.  Book 1 of series.

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 novella in the Slough House series.

In Slough House 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 is determined to discover who destroyed his career. Meanwhile, in Regents Park, Diana Taverners 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 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 breaks cover, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score.  Book 6 of series

When Caroline Daniels takes a deadly fall in front of a train and her lover fails to turn up at the funeral, Zoë Boehm 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?  Book 2 of series.

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.

A novella in the Slough House series.

London Rules might not be written down, but everyone knows rule one. Cover your arse. The country's being rocked by an apparently random string of terror attacks, and over at Slough House, the crew are about to rediscover their greatest strength - that of making a bad situation much, much worse. It's a good job Jackson Lamb knows the rules. Because those things aren't going to break themselves.  Book 5 of series.

Tom Bettany is working in France when he learns that his estranged 26-year-old son is dead. Liam Bettany fell from his London balcony, where he was smoking dope. Bettany returns home to find out the truth about his son's death. But more than a few people are interested to hear he is back in town. 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 disgraced MI5 operatives are reassigned to spend the rest of their spy careers pushing paper. But when one of them is kidnapped by a former soldier bent on revenge, Jackson Lamb's agents soon uncover a web of intrigue that involves not only a group of private mercenaries but also the highest authorities in the Security Service.  Book 3 of series

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.

Book 5 in the Zoe Boehm series.

Trying to investigate the Secret Service is like trying to get rid of the stink of dead badger. Hard. For two years the government's Monochrome inquiry has produced nothing more than a series of dead ends. The Service has kept what happened in the newly reunified Berlin under wraps for decades, and intends for it to stay that way. But then the OTIS file turns up.

What classified secrets does it hold? And what damage will it create? All Max Janácek knows is that someone is chasing him through the pitch-dark country lanes and they want him gone. We all have jobs to do in the daylight. It's what you do in the secret hours that reveals who you really are.

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.  Book 7 of series

Jackson Lamb's misfit crew of highly trained spooks don't run ops, they push paper. But then a young boy is kidnapped and held hostage with his beheading scheduled for live broadcast on the net. Whatever the instructions of the Service, the 'slow horses' aren't going to just sit quiet and watch . . .  Book 1 of series

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.

Book 4 in the Zoe Boehm series.

Veteran spook David Cartwright can still spot when the stoats are on his trail. Jackson Lamb worked with Cartwright back in the day - he knows better than most that this is no vulnerable old man. So it's Lamb they call to identify the body when Cartwright's panic button raises the alarm at Service HQ. And Lamb who will do whatever he thinks necessary, to protect an agent in peril . . .  Book 4 of series.

Twenty-six-year-old Maggie Barnes is someone you would never look at twice. Living alone in a month-to-month sublet in 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 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.

When Zoe Boehm agrees to track down the gang who knocked over Sweeney's jewellery shop, 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 Katrina Blake from her late husband's brothers, Arkle and Trent.

Unfortunately for Zoe, Arkle has a crossbow, Tim has nothing left to lose, and even Katrina has her secrets.  Book 3 of series.