A shakeup at MI5 and a terrorist attack on British soil set in motion clandestine machinery known to few modern spies. David Cartwright isn't a modern spy, however; he's legend and a bonafide Cold War hero. He's also in his dotage and losing his mind to Alzheimer's. His stories of "stotes" hiding in the bushes, following his every move have been dismissed by friends and family for years. Cartwright may be losing track of reality but he's certain about one thing: Old spooks don't go quietly and neither do the secrets they keep. What happens when an old spook loses his mind? Does the Service have a retirement home for those who know too many secrets but don't remember they're secret? Or does someone take care of the senile spy for good? These are the questions River Cartwright must ask when his grandfather, a Cold War-era operative, starts to forget to wear pants and begins to suspect everyone in his life has been sent by the Home Office to watch him. But River has other things to worry about. A bomb has detonated in the middle of a busy shopping center and killed forty innocent civilians. The agents of Slough House have to figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates.
Industry Reviews
Winner of the 2017 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller
Longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award Praise for Spook Street
Winner of the 2017 SWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller
Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel
An Irish Times Best Book of 2017
The Guardian Best Books of 2017
A Seattle Times Notable Book of 2017
â A Boston Globe Best Book of 2017
Nominated for the 2018 Barry Award for Best Thriller
Shortlisted for the British Book Award for Crime & Thriller Book of the Year
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"Terrific spy novel . . . Sublime dialogue, frictionless plotting."
--Ian Rankin, via Twitter
"Spook Street is thoroughly gripping espionage, focused on intelligent plotting over action for its own sake--think le Carr�, but with a heartier dash of dry humor."
--The Seattle Times
"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."
--The Spectator
"[Herron] is superb at evoking the le Carr�-esque air of ennui, cynicism and self-loathing which permeates an intelligence service on its uppers, but which remains--the alternative being too awful to contemplate--duty bound to keep calm and carry on . . . Herron also leavens the mood with flashes of mordant humour, while the hilariously repellent Jackson Lamb--the anti-Smiley--is a constant source of politically incorrect one-liners."
--The Irish Times
"It's not often a reviewer can say, 'You've never read anything quite like this' but it's a safe encomium to use in the case of Mick Herron. The author's idiosyncratic writing is unique in his genre: the spycraft of le Carr� refracted through the blackly comic vision of Joseph Heller's Catch-22."
--Financial Times
"Sheer fun. Herron is spy fiction's great humorist, mixing absurd situations with sparklingly funny dialogue and elegant, witty prose."
--The Times
"The lavishly loathsome Jackson Lamb oversees the action with all the finesse of a shark in a swimming pool."
--Metro News (UK)
"Brilliant."
--The Boston Globe
"All espionage aficionados are--or soon will be--reading Herron. But it's high time, too, that readers of literary fiction embrace him in the way they have John le Carr�."
--Booklist, Starred Review
"Terrific . . . A heady mixture of deadpan humor, deft characterizations, and acute insight."
--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"Terrific . . . it's a real pleasure to watch the super-smart if damaged Slough House agents rising to the occasion."
--The Seattle Review of Books
"Snappy dialog, crafty twists . . . I've enjoyed each of the books in this series and always find them hard to put down."
--A Fresh Fiction "Fresh Pick"
"Droll, fast-paced, and with a cast of crazy characters, you wouldn't want to work at Slough House but you certainly want to read about it."
--Bookgasm
"[Herron] does it all with a darkly deadpan humor that is as scathingly funny as it is irreverent. There's no let up, no let down, it's one hell of a tale told masterfully."
--Open Letters Monthly
"Laced with black humor, this intense fourth in the series won the 2017 Steel Dagger Award."
--Reviewing the Evidence
Praise for the Slough House novels
"[Herron is the] le Carr� of the future . . . The characters are brilliant."
--Patrick Neale on BBC's The Oxford Book Club
"Heroic struggles, less-heroic failures and a shoot-out-cum-heist . . . with no let-up in the page turning throughout."
--Esquire
"Herron's strength is in examining at close hand the absurdities, conflicts, and dangers of the intelligence agency as an institution at the center of some of the most central conflicts in the 21st century."
--Los Angeles Review of Books
"[Reads] like an episode of Spooks written by Ricky Gervais . . . 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."
--The Daily Telegraph, â â â â â
"A superb thriller . . . Herron may be the most literate, and slyest, thriller writer in English today."
--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
