Slow Horses
London, England: Slough House is where 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 there. Maybe they botched an Op so badly they 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 have in common, though, is they 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.
When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, the slow horses see an opportunity to redeem themselves. But is the victim really who he appears to be?
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Mick Herron
Mick Herron is the #1 bestselling and award-winning novelist and short story writer, best known for his Slough House thrillers. The series has been adapted into an Apple TV series, Slow Horses, starring Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb.
Raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, Herron studied English Literature at Oxford, where he continues to live. After some years writing poetry, he turned to fiction, and – despite a daily commute into London, where he worked as a sub editor – found time to write about 350 words a day. His first novel, Down Cemetery Road, was published in 2003. This was the start of Herron’s Zoë Boehm series, set in Oxford and featuring detective Zoë Boehm and civilian Sarah Tucker. The other books in the series are The Last Voice You Hear, Why We Die, and Smoke and Whispers, set in his native Newcastle. During the same period he wrote a number of short stories, many of which appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
Slough House
In a genre often defined by flawless operatives and polished espionage, Slough House takes a delightfully different path. These are not the spies entrusted with the nation's greatest secrets. They are the castoffs, the mistakes, the agents who failed once and were quietly pushed into a forgotten corner of British intelligence. Yet from that unlikely premise emerges one of the sharpest and most compelling spy thriller series of the modern era.
Slough House consists of eight primary books, and includes four additional books that complement the series but are not considered mandatory reads and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
