Herron was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he earned a degree in English. [1] [2] [3] Career [ edit ] Location of the fictional Slough House (Aldersgate Street, London) June 1, 2022 Update Apple TV+ series 'Slow Horses' renewed for Seasons 3 and 4, to be based on Books 3 'Real Tigers' and 4 'Spook Street'. Story at Variety. Over at Slough House, the agents are excelling at their specialty – complicating an already difficult situation.

This is irresistible writing suggesting a lovechild of le Carre and Joseph Heller's Catch-22: ironclad storytelling and off-kilter humour * Financial Times, Books of the Year * Stylistically, you can draw comparisons with the work of Raymond Chandler, though Herron keeps a tighter grasp on his narrative than Chandler ever did . . . Herron is a master of timing, word by word, sentence by sentence. His language creates its own world, with streaks of satire and loss that prevent it from becoming too comfortable.” I mean really its just great great writing. Witty, ironic, intelligent you name something you want from a book its probably in here. HUGELY entertaining conversational pieces are embedded within the wider story which is utterly gripping, totally captivating and ultimately satisfying. This author knows how to put a finish on things. Standing by the Wall: The Collected Slough House Novellas (2022) - Includes all novellas in the Slough House series published as of 2022. The prologue yanks you into a typical mall somewhere in London. It’s full of busy shoppers & bored teens lounging around the fountain. Then the unspeakable happens. A man steps into the crowd & detonates his vest. In the horrific aftermath, MI5 is called in to investigate & calm the public but things really hit the fan when the bomber is identified.

Nobody Walks (2015)– this book uses some of the Slough House world and characters, but it's not officially part of the series Bad things are happening at Slough House. Catherine Standish is drinking again, Louisa Guy is struggling with lost love, and a new recruit is determined to find out who destroyed his career, no matter what the cost.

The OB, on the other hand, knows he’s forgetful, but he has retained his lifelong suspicion of everyone. He keeps an eye out for “stoats”, as he refers to “the watchers” who may be sent to spy on him. He knows he’s superfluous to requirements and a bit of a loose cannon, and he’s determined not to be eliminated by either side. Finally, the long reign of Ingrid Tearney as head of MI5 has ended and for the first time we see a male First Desk in action. Claude Whelan goes through the five stages of grief as he starts to come to terms with the realities of being the one in charge of MI5. The bus had arrived at a scheduled stop ten minutes previously and had remained there since, engine off, though traffic flowed freely past. None of the passengers made any audible complaint. Either they were regulars and had expected the hiatus, or were new to buses and had lost the will to live. This first one rings true to me as a Chicagoan where, when it comes to driving, there are only two times of year – winter season and construction season. I’m a radical feminist, as you know,” Lamb might have said, stubbing out his cigarette. “But the hot flashes always get these old girls in the end.”Although the fairy tales we tell our children have now been sanitized and given happy endings, the original tale tellers (and Herron) know it’s better to recognize that a parent makes a deal with the Pied Piper at their own peril. If you’re not careful, he just may return to spirit your children away. Unfortunately, having secrets can be a very bad thing, even if you're that far down the spy ladder. In spite of their low status within the agency, the agents of Slough House will soon find themselves in the middle of something that threatens not just themselves, but all of MI5. The element of surprise is a constant in the novel, but not for one moment is it anything other than totally convincing. Equally so is the cynical portrayal of the Intelligence Services. Whilst they are always concerned with ensuring the safety of the country, they insist on doing this in such a way that blame will never be attached to them if things go wrong. If mistakes have been made in the past they must remain in the past. In addition, there is always the desire for career advancement, which requires an innate capacity for placing blame elsewhere.

There’s been a bombing of a shopping centre, plus River is starting to worry about his grandfather’s mental state. He has the same concerns that everyone has about relatives with dementia, plus the added concern that his grandfather may indeed shoot someone who comes to the door, believing that they are out to get him. That spy-paranoia doesn’t just go away just because he is losing his grip on every-day life. It's certainly possible to read this as a standalone but I would strongly recommend starting with Slow Horses: Slough House and following the series to understand the emotional trajectories. Sharp, cynical, violent in places, but with the snappiest of sharp dialogue and laugh-out-loud funny in places, I love what Herron is doing with this series. I’m sure we’ve all spent hours planning the best way of killing River,” Lamb said. “But our assassin came all the way from France, which sounds more like a job than a hobby. So let’s assume he was after Grandpa. Business before pleasure and all that.”I’ve gotten some angry letters from people who accused me of having disdain for Trump,” Herron said. “I think that’s a misreading. I was going for contempt.” Meanwhile, things have changed at Slough House, with nerdy-beyond-belief Roddy Ho sporting “cool” clothes and bragging about a girlfriend. He’s always thought he follows all the rules he’s read in magazines and that he is irresistible. Unbelievable is more like it. A superb thriller . . . Herron may be the most literate, and slyest, thriller writer in English today.”

She shook her head; at the cigarette, at him, at the way he broke news, which was the way he broke everything else: with a certain grim joy at watching it shatter. To be a writer of genre fiction is to belong to something akin to an honorable medieval guild. Taylor’s newest book, “The Royal Secret,” is the latest in his series of best-selling thrillers set in seventeenth-century London. When Herron was saddled with being called spy fiction’s “best-kept secret,” Taylor wrote a review in which he said that Herron writes like Raymond Chandler, except better. Both Herron and Taylor blurbed Hilary’s spooky novel “Fragile.” Herron called it “a dark river.” I noted that this novel was not as snarkily funny as some of the other installments. I've thus given it a tiny downgrade to 4.5 stars from the previous unqualified rating of 5 stars. But its emotional depth merits rounding up so it's still a 5 star read. In the morning, Howard headed out to go hiking in the Malvern Hills, and Herron and I boarded a train to Oxford. We sat at a laminated table, face to face, watching rain streak the windows as we sped through the sodden countryside. “See It, Say It, Sorted,” the signs above every door read, flashing green pixels.Lamb is convinced that there is a connection with a suicide bombing that has just taken place in West London. The novel is concerned with establishing precisely how the missing man, the mysterious house in France and the bombing are connected. The way in which this is accomplished shows a grasp of surveillance tradecraft that seems totally professional. One scene in particular where a spy is followed by another who, in turn, is followed by two more is very cleverly written. However, as well as being a spy novel, this is at the same time a thriller. As it progresses and the mystery becomes clearer the suspense mounts. In the light of what we are told at the beginning, much of what emerges comes from a most surprising source.