Clown Town

The brand new Slough House thriller from the #1 bestseller Mick Herron

The new Slough House thriller from the #1 bestseller Mick Herron

SUNDAY TIMES, THRILLER OF THE YEAR

GUARDIAN, CRIME BOOK OF THE YEAR

DAILY TELEGRAPH, BOOK OF THE YEAR

TLS, BOOK OF THE YEAR

THE SPECTATOR, BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Mick Herron is our best and most topical spy writer' Ian Rankin

'Clown Town is a masterpiece' India Knight, Sunday Times

'An authentic megastar of the genre' Sam Leith, Guardian

'No one can rival Mick Herron' The Times

'A superb thriller' The Spectator

'Masterly' Times Literary Supplement, books of the year

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MI5's First Desk, Diana Taverner, doesn't appreciate threats.

So when those involved in a covert operation during the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland threaten to expose the ugly side of state security, Taverner goes on the offensive. And when that happens, people get hurt.

Over at Slough House, the repository for failed spies, the slow horses are hard at work: belittling each other, pushing paper, and marking time. Their boss, Jackson Lamb, wants them at their desks, but the slow horses are always looking for a way back on to Spook Street.

Meanwhile, another slow horse, River Cartwright, is waiting to be passed fit for work. At a loose end, and with his grandfather - a legendary former spy - long dead, River investigates the secrets of the old man's library, and a mysteriously missing book. What stories will it hold? And who wants those stories to stay silent?

After all, spies lie, they betray, it's what they do.

*Mick Herron's Clown Town was a Sunday Times Number Four bestseller in hardback in the second week of September 2025

About the Author

Mick Herron is the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Slough House thrillers, which have been published in over twenty-five languages and are the basis of the award-winning TV series Slow Horses, starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb. Among his other novels are the ZoA Boehm series, also now adapted for TV starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, and the standalone novels The Secret Hours and Nobody Walks.

Mick's awards include the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the CWA Gold, Steel and Diamond Daggers. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives in Oxford.