Mick Herron

Mick Herron is a British mystery and thriller novelist. He is the author of the ''Slough House'' series, early novels of which have been adapted for the ''Slow Horses'' television series. He won the Crime Writers' Association 2013 Gold Dagger award for ''Dead Lions''.

Early life

Herron was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he earned a degree in English.

Career

In 2003, he published his first novel, ''Down Cemetery Road''. It was the first volume in a four-book series about Zoë Boehm, an Oxford private detective.

In 2010, he began a spy series titled ''Slough House'', with first volume ''Slow Horses'', featuring MI5 agents who have been exiled from the agency mainstream for various failures. The second volume in this series, ''Dead Lions'', published in 2013, won the Crime Writers' Association 2013 Gold Dagger award. Herron has stated that the lead character, Jackson Lamb, was influenced by Reginald Hill's Andy Dalziel. , the series includes eight novels, plus several associated novellas, and events in related novels. Early volumes have also been adapted for episodic television.

''Slow Horses'' was published by Constable in 2010, but the firm declined the opportunity to publish the next book in the series in the United Kingdom due to disappointing sales of its predecessor. Soho published the ''Slough House'' novels in the United States, and John Murray started republishing the series in the UK from 2015.

Herron's short stories have been regularly published in ''Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'' and some are collected in the book, ''All the Livelong Day'', published in 2013.

Bibliography

Zoë Boehm series

*''Down Cemetery Road'' (2003)
*''The Last Voice You Hear'' (2004)
*''Why We Die'' (2006)
*''Smoke and Whispers'' (2009)

The Slough House series (Jackson Lamb)

*''Slow Horses'' (2010)
*''Dead Lions'' (2013)
*''The List'' (2015 novella)
*''Real Tigers'' (2016)
*''Spook Street'' (2017)
*''London Rules'' (2018)
*''The Drop'' (US title: "''The Marylebone Drop''") (2018 novella)
*''Joe Country'' (2019)
*''The Catch'' (2020 novella)
*''Slough House'' (2021)
*''Bad Actors'' (2022)
*''Standing By The Wall'' (2022 novella)
*''The Secret Hours'' (expected 2023)

Standalone novels

*''Reconstruction'' (2008)
*''Nobody Walks'' (2015)
*''This Is What Happened'' (2018)

Although not part of the ''Slough House'' series, ''Reconstruction'' and ''Nobody Walks'' use some of the same characters and provide some character backstory. In story terms, ''Reconstruction'' is set before ''Slow Horses'', whereas ''Nobody Walks'' comes after ''The List'' and before ''Spook Street''.

Short story collections

*''All the Livelong Day'' (2013)
*''Dolphin Junction'' (2021)

Featuring five standalone crime fiction stories complemented by four mystery stories featuring Zoë Boehm and Joe Silvermann. The collection also includes tales with Jackson Lamb of Slough House.

* Standing by the Wall: The Collected Slough House Novellas (2022)

Adaptation

The Slough House series has been adapted for television under the name ''Slow Horses'', starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, with the first six-part season streamed on Apple TV+ from 1 April 2022. The second season, based on ''Dead Lions'', was filmed back-to-back with the first and premiered on 2 December 2022. It was announced in June 2022 that further seasons, adapting ''Real Tigers'' and ''Spook Street'', had been greenlit.

Awards

* Dolphin Junction
** Joint winner, Ellery Queen Readers Award 2009
* Slow Horses
** Longlisted for Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award 2010
* Dead Lions
** Shortlisted for Barry Award 2014, for best thriller
** Shortlisted for Macavity Prize, 2014, for best novel
** Winner, CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel 2013
** Winner, Palle Rosencrantz Award 2020
* Nobody Walks
** Shortlisted for Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award 2015
* Real Tigers
** Shortlisted for Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award 2016
** Shortlisted for CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel 2016
** Winner, Last Laugh Award, 2017
** Shortlisted, Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2017
* Spook Street
** Shortlisted for CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel 2017
** Winner, Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award 2017, Spook Street
** Shortlisted, British Book Awards, Crime and Thriller Book of the Year 2018
** Shortlisted for Barry Award 2018, for best thriller
** Shortlisted, Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2018
** Winner, Last Laugh Award, 2018
* London Rules
** Shortlisted for CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel 2018
** Shortlisted for Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award 2018
** Shortlisted, Last Laugh Award, 2019
** Shortlisted for Barry Award 2019, for best thriller
** Shortlisted, Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2019
** Winner, Capital Crime Best Thriller Award 2019
* Joe Country
** Shortlisted, Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2020
** Shortlisted for CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel 2020
* Slough House
** Winner, Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2022
** Winner, Last Laugh Award, 2022
** Shortlisted for Barry Award 2022, for best thriller

Personal life

Herron lives in Oxford. He enjoys playing squash.

References

External links

*

Mick Herron Spybrary Podcast Interview
* Interview with Profile magazin
The dark(ly comic) side of MI5, Page by: Jim Sullivan - Profile

{{DEFAULTSORT:Herron, Mick
Living people
British male novelists
Crime Writers' Association
21st-century British novelists
English male novelists
21st-century English male writers
Writers from Newcastle upon Tyne
1963 births