<p><span class="a-text-bold"><u>*Discover </u></span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic"><u>The Secret Hours</u></span><span class="a-text-bold"><u>, the gripping new thriller from Mick Herron and an unmissable read for Slough House fans*</u></span><span><br></span><span class="a-text-bold"><u><br>*Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman*</u></span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">'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 Carré - is a terrific thing' Gary Oldman</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">Spooks are supposed to be stealthy . . . But those who make a noisy mess of their careers end up in Slough House.</span><span><br><br>This is Jackson Lamb's kingdom: a dumping ground for spies who've screwed up. Once high fliers, they're now slow horses, condemned to a life of pushing paper as punishment for crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal. In drab and mildewed offices, these highly trained spies moan and squabble, stare at the walls, and dream of better days - not one of them joined the Intelligence Service to be a slow horse, and the one thing they have in common is their desire to be back in the action.<br><br>So when a young man is kidnapped and held hostage, his beheading scheduled for live broadcast on the net, the slow horses aren't going to just sit quietly and watch. And unless they can prove they're not as useless as they're thought to be, a public execution is going to echo round the world.<br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">'The most exciting development in spy fiction since the Cold War' </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">The Times </span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">'The most enjoyable British spy novel in years' </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Mail on Sunday</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">'The new spy master' </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Evening Standard</span></p>
<div class="a-row a-expander-container a-expander-extend-container"> <h3><span>Review</span></h3> <div class="a-section a-spacing-small a-padding-small"> <span class="a-text-bold">Praise for Mick Herron's Jackson Lamb series:</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">.</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">The new spy master</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Evening Standard</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">Jackson Lamb - the most fascinating and irresistible thriller series hero to emerge since Jack Reacher</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Sunday Times</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">As a master of wit, satire, insight . . . Herron is difficult to overpraise</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Daily Telegraph</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">The finest new crime series this Millennium</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Mail on Sunday</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">The best modern British spy series</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Daily Express</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">The John le Carré of our generation</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Val McDermid</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">Mick Herron is</span><span> </span><span class="a-text-bold">the real deal</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Irish Times</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">If you read one spy novel this year, read </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Real Tigers</span><span class="a-text-bold">. Better still, read the whole series</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Andrew Taylor, The Spectator</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">Surely among the finest British spy fiction of the past 20 years</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Metro</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">With his poet's eye for detail, his comic timing and relish for violence, Herron fills a gap that has been yawning ever since Len Deighton retired</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Daily Telegraph</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">The most enjoyable spy novel in years</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Mail on Sunday</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">A funny, stylish, satirical, gripping story</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Guardian</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">I was delighted to discover that this is merely the first in a captivating series</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Herald</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">The first of his series about MI5 and a character called Jackson Lamb, one of the great monsters of modern fiction. He's a wonderfully cynical writer and there's a lot of dark humour in it. I'm not clever enough to write this sort of thing</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Daily Express</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">I was delighted to discover Mick Herron's riotous </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Slow Horses</span><span class="a-text-bold"> series about the black sheep of MI5</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Big Issue</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">For something really gripping, head for Mick Herron's </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Jackson Lamb</span><span class="a-text-bold"> series, in which a sidelined spook and his cohorts battle their way back to the centre of a life of espionage. Begin with </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Slow Horses</span><span class="a-text-bold"> and enjoy</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Observer</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">Mick Herron's Slow Horses series has all the thrills of John Le Carre or Len Deighton with a black humour</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Daily Mail (Scotland)</span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">One of the most consistently enjoyable literary achievements of the past decade</span><span> ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">The Times</span> </div> <h3><span>Book Description</span></h3> <div class="a-section a-spacing-small a-padding-small"> <span>The first book in the </span><span class="a-text-italic">Sunday Times</span><span> bestselling, award-winning, Slough House series, featuring Mick Herron's much loved band of disgraced spies and their notorious leader, Jackson Lamb,</span><span class="a-text-bold"> 'the most fascinating and irresistible thriller series hero to emerge since Jack Reacher'</span><span class="a-text-italic"> (Sunday Times)</span> </div> <div data-expanded="true" class="a-expander-content a-expander-extend-content a-expander-content-expanded" style="overflow: hidden;"> <h3><span>About the Author</span></h3> <div class="a-section a-spacing-small a-padding-small"> <span>Mick Herron is the #1 </span><span class="a-text-italic">Sunday Times </span><span>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 twenty-five languages, and are the basis of a major TV series starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb. He is also the author of the Zoë Boehm series, and the standalone novels </span><span class="a-text-italic">Reconstruction </span><span>and </span><span class="a-text-italic">This is What Happened</span><span>. Mick was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives in Oxford.</span> </div> </div> <div class="a-row"> <a data-csa-c-func-deps="aui-da-a-expander-toggle" data-csa-c-type="widget" data-csa-interaction-events="click" aria-expanded="true" role="button" href="javascript:void(0)" data-action="a-expander-toggle" class="a-expander-header a-declarative a-expander-extend-header" data-a-expander-toggle="{"allowLinkDefault":true, "expand_prompt":"Read more", "collapse_prompt":""}" data-csa-c-id="6ejhv8-cq1q7g-jab8cg-5g6cxz"><i class="a-icon a-icon-extender-collapse"></i><span class="a-expander-prompt"></span></a> </div> </div>
