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All of Mick Herron’s Books!
Who is Mick Herron?
Born in 1963, Mike Herron is a British mystery and thriller writer that has been compared to John Le Carré. He is known for The Slough House series (soon to be an Apple TV+ show starring Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas).
He published his first novel, Down Cemetary Road, in 2003, launching the Oxford mysteries series. Throughout the following years, he won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, the Steel Dagger for Best Thriller, and the Ellery Queen Readers Award, and been nominated for the Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and Theakstons Novel of the Year Awards.
He currently lives in Oxford and writes full-time.
Mick Herron Books in Order:
Zoë Boehm series in order (also called Oxford series)
- Down Cemetery Road (2003) — When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah Tucker—a young married woman, bored and unhappy with domestic life—becomes obsessed with finding her. Accustomed to dull chores in a childless household and hosting her husband’s wearisome business clients for dinner, Sarah suddenly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew as her investigation reveals that people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead.
- The Last Voice You Hear (2004) — Zoë Boehm has harbored a distinct aversion to death ever since she shot the man intent on killing her. So when Caroline Daniels takes a deadly fall in front of a train and her lover fails to turn up at the funeral, Zoë wants nothing to do with the case. But Caroline’s boss is persistent, and as Zoë attempts to unlock the secrets of a woman she’s never met while in search of a man who could be anywhere, she starts to wonder if he’s found her first. And if he has, will that make her the next victim, or prove to be her salvation from a paralyzing fear?
- Why We Die (2006) — When Zoë Boehm agrees to track down the gang who knocked over Sweeney’s jewelry shop, she’s just hoping to break even in time for tax season. She certainly doesn’t expect to wind up in a coffin. But she’s about to become entangled with a strange collection of characters, starting with suicidal Tim Whitby, who’s dedicating what’s left of his life to protecting the pretty, battered Katrina Blake from her late husband’s sociopathic brothers, Arkle and Trent.
- Smoke and Whispers (2009) — When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as private detective Zoë Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zoë kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her? Why was she wearing the jacket a murderer had stolen years before? And what’s brought Sarah’s former sparring partner Gerard Inchon to the same broken-down hotel where she’s staying? Coincidence is an excuse that soon appears pretty unconvincing. Sarah can’t leave until she’s found the answers to her questions, however dangerous they might turn out to be.
The Slough House series in order (Jackson Lamb)
The Slough House is where the washed-up MI5 spies are relegated when their careers are derailed. Maybe they got in the way of an ambitious colleague and had the rug yanked out from under them or they drink a little too much.
Now, if they want to get back in the action, they have to collaborate with one another. For more information, go see The Slough House series reading order.
- Slow Horses (2010)
- Dead Lions (2013)
- The List (2015, novella)
- Real Tigers (2016)
- Spook Street (2017)
- London Rules (2018)
- The Marylebone Drop (2018, novella) — aka The Drop.
- Joe Country (2019)
- The Catch (2020, novella)
- Slough House (2021)
- Bad Actors (2022)
- Standing by the Wall: A Slough House Interlude (2022, novella)
Stand-alone novels by Mick Herron
- Reconstruction (2008) — Not considered part of the Slough House series, this book is set in the same universe and can be considered as a prequel (for Bad Sam Chapman) and it’s also sometimes considered as the fifth book in the Oxford series (without Zoë Boehm). When an operational catastrophe puts a gun in the hands of a young man, who then breaks into South Oxford Nursery School and takes a group of hostages, teacher Louise Kennedy fears the worst. But Jaime Segura isn’t there on a homicidal mission, and he’s just as scared as those whose lives he holds as collateral. As an armed police presence builds outside the school’s gates, Bad Sam Chapman – head of the intelligence service’s internal security force, the Dogs – battles the clock to find out what Jaime is after.
- Nobody Walks (2015) — Not considered part of the Slough House series, this book is set in the same universe and uses some of the same characters. To read between The List and Spook Street. It follows Tom Bettany, a man with a violent past and only one thing to live for: Avenging his son’s death.
- This Is What Happened (2018) — Twenty-six-year-old Maggie Barnes is someone you would never look at twice. Living alone in a month-to-month sublet in the huge city of London, with no family but an estranged sister, no boyfriend or partner, and not much in the way of friends, Maggie is just the kind of person who could vanish from the face of the earth without anyone taking notice. Or just the kind of person MI5 needs to infiltrate the establishment and thwart an international plot that puts all of Britain at risk. Now one young woman has the chance to be a hero—if she can think quickly enough to stay alive.
Collections
- Dolphin Junction (2021) — Five standalone nerve-rackingly thrilling crime fiction stories are complemented by four mystery stories featuring the Oxford wife-and-husband detective team of shrewd Zoë Boehm and hapless Joe Silvermann. The collection also includes a peek into the past of Jackson Lamb, an irascible top agent at Slough House.
