Slough House: Slough House Thriller 7

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*Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman* 'The best thriller writer in Britain today' Daily Express 'As a master of wit, satire, insight... Herron is difficult to overpraise' Daily Telegraph 'The greatest comic writer of spy fiction in the English language' The Times 'Kill us? They've never needed to kill us,' said Lamb. 'I mean, look at us. What would be the point?' 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. And with enemies on all sides, not even Jackson Lamb can keep his crew from harm.

Mick Herron is the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Slough House thrillers, which have won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award, two CWA Daggers, been published in 20 languages, and are the basis of a major TV series starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb. He is also the author of the Zoe Boehm series, and the standalone novels Reconstruction and This is What Happened. Mick was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives in Oxford.

I can report that the new Mick Herron novel, Slough House, is as eye-wateringly funny as it is nerve-shreddingly tense. I think this might be the best Jackson Lamb outing yet, and that's taking it above a very high benchmark * Christopher Brookmyre * 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 * Mick Herron is one of the finest writers of his generation * Steve Cavanagh * I enjoyed Slough House tremendously. Witty, clever and horribly on point. Lots to laugh about while being careful not to miss a word. This isn't a book to skim read * Kit de Waal * An excellent writer * Sunday Times * [Slough House] is the best yet. The jokes are frequent and good, the pacing first rate, and the plot pieces, the moves and countermoves, snap as satisfyingly into place as anything I've read in the genre. * Times Literary Supplement * Herron has certainly devised the most completely realised espionage universe since that peopled by George Smiley...What Herron has actually been writing is a modern sit-com. This is "the Office" (as insiders refer to MI6) as The Office, half-complete with the Slough setting. * The Times * [Jackson Lamb] Herron's glorious creation propels the story to the bitter end where the non-stop barrage of jokes is fatally undercut by a final shocking twist. * Evening Standard * I'll tell you what, to have been lucky enough to play Smiley in one's career; and now go and play Jackson Lamb in Mick Herron's novels - the heir, in a way, to le Carre - is a terrific thing. * Gary Oldman *