Mick Herron
Mick Herron is a British author born in 1963 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He studied English literature at Merton College, Oxford, and has worked as an editor and copywriter. Herron wrote several well-received standalone thrillers before creating the series that would make his reputation: the Slough House novels, a sequence of spy thrillers built around the concept of a dumping ground for MI5 agents who have blundered too badly to be dismissed outright but are too embarrassing to be kept in the mainstream service.
The Slough House series began with Slow Horses (2010), which introduced the unforgettable Jackson Lamb — a slovenly, flatulent, brilliantly intelligent former field agent who now presides over a team of failures and misfits known as the slow horses. The novel immediately distinguished itself from conventional spy fiction with its mordant wit, its literary quality, and its utterly distinctive protagonist. Despite critical acclaim, the series built its audience slowly through years of devoted word-of-mouth before exploding into mainstream consciousness when the Apple TV+ adaptation starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb premiered in 2022, becoming one of the most critically acclaimed television dramas of the year.
The series now comprises eight novels — including Dead Lions (2013), winner of the CWA Gold Dagger, Real Tigers (2016), Spook Street (2017), London Rules (2018), Joe Country (2019), Slough House (2021), Bad Actors (2022), and The Secret Hours (2023) — each praised for its intricate plotting, its acerbic social commentary on British institutions, and its ensemble of damaged but deeply human characters. Herron also writes the separate Zoë Boehm series of standalone thrillers.
Herron’s prose style is widely admired for its wit, its precision, and its dark comedy. He brings to the spy genre a literary sensibility that recalls John le Carre, but his voice is entirely his own — bleaker and funnier and more contemporary. He has won the CWA Gold Dagger, the British Book Award for Crime and Thriller Book of the Year, and multiple other prizes. He is now widely regarded as one of the finest spy thriller writers working in English.