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The Secret Hours

Paperback
$18.95 US
5.51"W x 8.23"H x 1.12"D   | 14 oz | 24 per carton
On sale Aug 27, 2024 | 9781641296007
A gripping spy thriller from the bestselling author of Slow Horses, about a disastrous MI5 mission in Cold War Berlin—an absolute must-read for Slough House fans.

Set in the MI5 world of Slow Horses, now an Apple Original series from Apple TV+ starring Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas.


Two years ago, a hostile prime minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating “historical over-reaching” by the British Secret Service. Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so.

But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. Now the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust—and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away by the pounding London rain.

Until the eve of Monochrome’s shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin—an operation that ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history.

The Secret Hours is a dazzling entry point into Mick Herron’s body of work, a standalone spy thriller that is at once unnerving, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny. It is also the breathtaking secret history that Slough House fans have been waiting for.
Praise for The Secret Hours

Finalist for the Libby Book Award for Best Thriller
Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award
Shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award
Nominated for the ITW Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel

Nominated for the Barry Award for Best Thriller
Nominated for the Strand Critics Award for Best Mystery Novel

A National Bestseller
A New York Times Best Thriller of 2023
An NPR Best Book of 2023
The Guardian Best Crime and Thrillers of 2023
An Air Mail Best Mystery Book of 2023

People Magazine's Best Books of Fall 2023
A Washington Post Noteworthy Book for September
An Amazon Best of the Month - Mystery/Thriller
A BookPage Best Mystery & Suspense Book of 2023
An ABA Indie Next Pick for September 2023
A CrimeReads Top 10 Book for September
A Powell's Pick of the Month
★★★★ Starred Reviews from Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Library Journal and Booklist

“An intricate espionage thriller from Herron, whose Slough House series is the basis for Apple TV+'s Slow Horses. Bonus: This terrific standalone offers an enticing slice of Slough House's origin story.”
People Magazine

“Anyone who has yet to discover the particular genius of Mick Herron, author of the darkly hilarious 'Slow Horses' espionage novels, is in for a serious treat. It’s not necessary to read any of his other books before reading this one, but once you start, you’ll want to read them all.”
The New York Times Book Review

“This page-turning stand-alone novel is a perfect entry point into the eccentric world of civil servants and spies that Herron’s Slough House series so wittily portrays.”
The Washington Post

“A special treat . . . Herron’s narrative moves with ease between present and past, England and Germany, action and satire, propelled by prescient commentary on the passage of time . . . The Secret Hours culminates in an astonishing denouement that should startle even the savviest spy-fiction fan.”
—Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

“Mick Herron’s latest thriller connects the dots between the sins of the post-Cold War era and the messy, contemporary misadventures of the popular Slough House spy series, it’s also fantastic as a standalone. That said, if you’ve read the previous books, the breadcrumbs are a delight to follow.”
—NPR

“Herron keeps up his gravity-defying balancing act: belly-laugh spy spoof on one side, elegiac state-of-the-nation satire on the other, with a thin, taut line of polished prose between.”
Financial Times

The Secret Hours is a stand-alone novel on the periphery of the 'Slow Horses' universe whose focus is a slow-walking inquiry into historical wrongdoing in MI5, Britain’s domestic spy service. The book is classic Herron, featuring mordant humor, bureaucratic power plays, underappreciated functionaries, bravura action sequences and at least one unexpected casualty.”
—Sarah Lyall, The New York Times

“Herron is meticulous in his depictions of tradecraft and the dark corners where spooks ply their trade, but he is an unambiguous, 21st-century cynic . . . The Secret Hours is described as a stand-alone, familiar Slough House characters figure in the story under code names, and it contains revelations about their pasts that fans of those books and the Slow Horses TV series won’t want to miss.”
—Air Mail

The Secret Hours has all of Herron’s tight plotting and characteristically low-key humour. It’s an excellent standalone, but fans of his Slough House books would do well to pick it up too.”
―The Guardian

“Great Britain has a long, rich history of how-it-really-works espionage fiction, and Mick Herron—stealthy as a secret agent—has written himself to the very top of the list. If you haven't already been recruited, start with The Secret Hours—all Herron's trademark strengths are here: tension, intrigue, observation, humor, absurdity . . . and pitch-perfect prose.”
—Lee Child

"The Secret Hours is wonderful. It’s Mick Herron at his best, taking us into a dark world where there is high action, a spinning moral compass, and hidden motives on every page. And, oh, yes, the fun—Herron’s greatest talent may be the examination of serious things with a perfectly wry sense of humor."
Michael Connelly

“I doubt I’ll read a more enjoyable novel all year. The Secret Hours has it all: thrilling action scenes, crackling dialogue, characters to infuriate and beguile, and a neatly intricate plot. And through it all cuts Herron’s acerbic wit, its effect heightened by the glimpses he allows us, from time to time, from his world to ours.”
—Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train

“A deft knockout of a story, with an arc of history, written with humor and style. Mick Herron is one of the best writers of spy fiction working today.”
—Martin Cruz Smith

“There’s wit and suspense on almost every page of The Secret Hours, where the good guys are bad, the bad guys are worse and the reader is in luck.”
The Seattle Times

“Jam-packed with the kind of acidic insults fans of 'Slow Horses' love.”
Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A terrific stand-alone novel.”
—Mike Lupica, New York Daily News

“How good does new British espionage get? Read Mick Herron’s fabulous stand-alone new book and don’t weep for the loss of le Carré. As Herron proved in his brilliant Slough House series, his world of spies can hold its own with the best and here, he takes us back to where the master started: Cold War Berlin and a mission gone wrong.”
—Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail

“Manages to be witty and twisty even as it second-guesses the cleverness and heroism of spies themselves.”
—Slate.com

“The most mesmerizing spy novel you could hope to find since John le Carré left us . . . Herron has gifted us a magnificently plotted and charactered puzzle, marvellously written. Enjoy.”
Winnipeg Free-Press

“Superb . . . The expertly crafted tale probes political machinations, bureaucratic holdups, and the temptations of revenge. Come for the banter and Briticisms; stay for the conviction that it’s never too late to right past wrongs.”
Christian Science Monitor

“Simply a masterful new book from today’s premier espionage author.”
—Clea Simon, The Arts Fuse

“Because none of the Slough House characters are mentioned by name, The Secret Hours is not only a gripping standalone for the uninitiated, but also an ideal introduction to the pleasures of the series.”
Everything Zoomer

“[Herron] proves himself a modern rival to Ian Fleming and John Le Carré... This satire-flecked thriller should establish Herron as an institution.”
―Sunday Times (UK)

“[A] terrific new novel . . . Herron's traditional tradecraft is on show―the Blackadderesque relish of words, the spy-like manipulation of the reader, the understanding of how the English fend off the serious with humour.”
―The Times (UK)

"Herron is a subtle writer who offers a great deal, including psychological insights that stay with you long after the clever plot is complete."
―Literary Review (UK)

“Herron brings a le Carré setup (spies investigating spies) to this exemplary thriller that’s equal parts acerbic and illuminating.”
—CrimeReads

“Amazing and so, so funny.”
—WAMC The Roundtable

“It’s not all Aston Martin sports cars and martinis ('shaken, not stirred') in Herron’s spy world... Billed as a standalone, this smartly written, funny, and complex thriller is a good introduction for newbies, but fans of Herron’s 'Slough House' books will recognize a few crossover characters.”
—Wilda Williams, First Clue Reviews

“Herron continues his winning streak... This novel, filled with acid wit, political pokes, and a veritable basketful of 'Slough House' Easter eggs, will thrill longtime Herron fans and delight newcomers and aficionados of cracking-good spy fiction.”
Library Journal, Starred Review

“Hailed as a twenty-first-century Le Carré, Herron is a master at portraying the dark, disturbing world of espionage... Gripping, cryptic, tragic, and suspenseful, this must-read will keep readers riveted from first page to last.”
Booklist, Starred Review

“Espionage fans of all stripes will devour this exemplary outing.”
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Sly and suspenseful, The Secret Hours is both a marvelous standalone novel and a stunning companion to Herron’s Slough House series.”
BookPage, Starred Review

“Readers who’ve joined Herron in following the Slow Horses in a series of rollicking, scary novels won’t be surprised to learn that everyone here looks down their noses at everyone else, that everyone has a price, and that conflicts within MI5 are much more likely to turn lethal than conflicts outside, against England’s nominal enemies.”
Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Mick Herron

"The best in a generation, by some estimations, and irrefutably the funniest."
—Jill Lepore, The New Yorker

“Intricate plotting, full of twists . . . Herron can certainly write a real spy story, with all the misdirection and sleight of hand that requires. But it’s the surly Slough House mood, the eccentric characters, and Herron’s very black, very dry sense of humor that made me read one after the other without a break.”
—Laura Miller, Slate.com

“Out of a wickedly imagined version of MI5, [Herron] has spun works of diabolical plotting and high-spirited cynicism, their pages filled with sardonic wit, their characters approaching the surreal.”
The Wall Street Journal

“The sharpest spy fiction since John le Carré.”
—NPR's Fresh Air

“Mick Herron never tells a suspense story in the expected way . . . In Herron's book, there is no hiding under the desk.”
The New York Times Book Review

“Stylish and engaging.”
The Washington Post

“[Herron] really is funny and his cynicism is belied, here and there, by flashes of the mingled tenderness and anger that seem to define Britain’s post-Brexit self-reflections.”
USA Today
Mick Herron was born in Newcastle and has a degree in English from Balliol College, Oxford. He is the author of the Oxford series, the Slough House series, the standalone books This Is What Happened, Nobody Walks, and Reconstruction, and the novella The List. His work has been nominated for the Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and CWA Steel Dagger Awards, and he has won an Ellery Queen Readers Award and the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel. He lives in Oxford. View titles by Mick Herron
The worst smell in the world is dead badger. He’d encountered it on his morning walk down a green lane; had caught the odour without seeing the corpse, but had guessed what it was before returning later with a shovel. Whether they all smelled that bad or whether this one had expired of noxious causes he didn’t know. As it turned out, he couldn’t do anything about it either—the creature had crawled into a tangled nest of roots to die, and it would require heavy machinery and a strong stomach to recover it. Lacking the former, and not wanting to put the latter to the test, Max opted for a third way: he’d walk a different route for a while, and see if one of the local farmers shifted it in the meantime. Which was why he wasn’t sure the badger would still be there a couple of nights later, when he was running for his life.
     The first of the intruders entered through the kitchen window. Max hadn’t been asleep, though anyone watching the cottage would have been forgiven for thinking otherwise: the lights were out, the curtains drawn. He’d been lying in bed, not so much struggling with insomnia as letting it do its worst, when he’d heard the window latch being finessed open: a piece of wire sliding through the draughty gap he’d been meaning to repair, lifting the metal hook from its eye. Quieter than taking out the glass, but a long way short of silent. He’d pulled on jogging pants and a sweatshirt, slipped into a pair of trainers, then froze in place, caught between two lives, trying to remember where he’d stashed his flight kit . . . You could worry you were losing your mind. That they were coming too late, and you’d long ago turned into whoever you were pretending to be.
      (Max Janáček. Retired (early) academic; still footling around with a history book, but mostly just passing the days—taking long walks, cooking slow meals, losing himself in Dickens.)
     The stairs were an out-of-tune orchestra of squeaks and whistles, every tread announcing that Peter or the wolf were on their way, unless you’d practised descending, and knew where to put your feet. So almost noiselessly he reached the sitting room, whose doorway was catty-corner to the kitchen, and plucked the poker from its stand by the wood-burning stove. Not a great weapon, for all its iconic status in fiction. You needed high ceilings to accommodate your swing. Max Janáček understood a good swing: he was the man you saw walking the lanes, beheading dandelions with a stick. Who lived in a five-hundred-year-old cottage in North Devon, and could be counted on to do the neighbourly thing: keep an eye out for the old folk, whose company he was on the threshold of joining; litter-pick after the bank holiday rush; sign the petition resisting the makeshift industrial estate down the lane—numbering seventeen cabins now. This and more he’d been for more than twenty years, and whether the locals took him at face value or gave less than a tuppenny damn had become irrelevant, or had done until someone slipped the latch on his kitchen window and climbed inside more or less gracefully, breaking no crockery, dislodging no pans, and moving across the flagged floor in careful silence, intent—it would seem—on unlocking the back door and allowing his comrades ingress. Or her comrades, as it turned out. Whether Max would have jabbed her so hard at the base of the skull with the poker, then slammed her head on the floor when she fell had he known it was a woman beneath the break-in gear was something he could ponder at leisure, if he survived the night. Meanwhile, he checked her for weapons. She was carrying a Taser, which put her outside the range of opportunist burglars, but no ID, and nothing to indicate what she was up to. But he had to work on the assumption that she wasn’t alone, an assumption confirmed when he picked up the landline to hear the deep silence of a well on a windless night. Inside the cottage—anywhere down this lane—his mobile made for a useful paperweight. So sitting tight and calling the cavalry wasn’t an option, and wouldn’t necessarily have been a sensible move anyway. Sometimes, it was the cavalry you had to watch out for.
     The cottage sat midway down a sloping lane, and was half of a twinned pair. In the other lived Old Dolly, who had probably forgotten a time when she’d simply been Dolly. Certainly she’d earned the Old by the time Max moved in, and still regarded him as three quarters a stranger, though he’d long reached the point where he was doing most of her shopping, all of her firewood gathering and a strong seven-eighths of listening to her bang on about immigration, which left him less uneasy than her habit of leaving a gas ring lit, to save striking a match for every cigarette. The next cottage along, a hundred yards distant, had been empty since Jonas Tripplehorn had gone to live with his daughter in Exeter; the cottage opposite—“cottage” by local tradition; it had four bedrooms—was a second home, and invariably unoccupied during the week. And further down the lane were other dwellings, some housing young families, some retired labourers, and some home-based industries—IT and retro clothing; bespoke greetings cards and editorial services—and beyond them, on the other side of the railway bridge across which the London-Plymouth service rattled, the field now playing host to the makeshift estate which had roused such local ire. Corrugated iron structures had been erected, one at a time, and makeshift barns built, now storing the kind of heavy machinery you could dismember a dead badger with. Since this shanty town’s foundation, traffic had multiplied tenfold, most of the vehicles heavily laden vans, with scaffolding poles tethered to flatbeds as the drivers headed to renovation jobs in the surrounding area; work which hadn’t extended as far as repairing the potholes their vehicles left behind. Even now, as Max slipped out of a side window, he could hear an engine coughing in that direction, as if it were having one last drag before laying down for the night.
     When he hit the ground he dropped into a crouch, and waited to see what happened next.
     Which was nothing, for a while. A pair of small owls hooted in the distance, a familiar duet of hunt and swoop, while on the main road, a quarter mile away, a lorry banjaxed the quiet, hauling freight westward. There was cloud cover. Max knew the skies well enough to guess what stars he’d be looking at, this particular time and date, but had to be content to see them with his mind’s eye only. More practically, from where he crouched he had a cross-section view of the lane and a full-frontal of the cottage opposite, which enjoyed enough shadowy places—the baggy hedge in front; the nook behind its outjutting porch—to conceal a ninja army. But if there were an actual professional threat lurking there, would they have sent a lone warrior into his kitchen? One he’d made pretty short work of, come to that? But it was pointless trying to second-guess an enemy whose purpose he didn’t know. The owls hooted again. You could set your watch by them. If you were a mouse, it was probably wise to.
     He wasn’t sure how long the woman in the kitchen would be out, but no more than a few minutes would be his guess. It wasn’t like calculated violence had been a habit even when he’d moved in circles where, if not the norm, it was at least an accepted accomplishment. No: the force with which he’d banged her head on the floor had more to do with outraged householder sensibilities than long dormant expertise. It would be sensible, though, to at least attempt to don the thought processes of the professional. Whoever they were, they suspected already and would soon know that their first incursion had failed. What they did next depended on their operational priorities. They wanted to be quiet, but they also wanted Max, and they might abandon thoughts of the former if the latter was within their reach. What, after all, would be the outcome of pandemonium? Lights going on in cottages, and a phone call to the police? Which might bring a rescue party, but not within the next thirty minutes, given the village’s isolation. So it was a risk they’d doubtless take. In which case, he’d better formulate a response to an all-out assault on the cottage.
     Legging it through the dark was the best he came up with.
     And this wasn’t the worst idea ever. They’d presumably arrived in a vehicle, maybe more than one, but they hadn’t driven down the lane, or he’d have heard. So they had likely parked at the junction, where another lane headed to the main road, and a choice of exit routes. That would be their objective, and whether he’d be lying back here with a hole in him or trussed up in the boot of their vehicle while they achieved it, he couldn’t know. The Taser, rather than—say—a knife or a gun or a Cruise missile suggested that killing him wasn’t Plan A, but all plans have contingencies, and if they couldn’t take him alive, they might prefer to leave him dead. Neither outcome held appeal for Max, who, if he could make it twenty yards up the road, could slip through the hedge and into the field where their vehicles couldn’t follow. He knew the terrain; they presumably didn’t. He’d walked that field at night times without number; he’d lain on his back and admired the stars there, which was not a habit he boasted about to the neighbours. He wouldn’t claim to know every bump and hollow, but familiarity should give him an edge. Still, he was a long way from being persuaded that this was the way to go when the decision was made for him: a familiar clunk and sigh told him the front door was swinging open. The woman he’d laid low was back on her feet, and her reappearance had galvanised the waiting troops: a shape, two shapes, materialised out of the darkness and ran to join her. There could be others. If he was going to move, it had to be now.
People entered his cottage, and over his head an eerie light broke through the window. They were using torches, and his sill clutter—plant pots, vases, candles on saucers—came briefly alive, casting ghostly shapes onto the night air. Slipping out of the lee of the wall, he crept round the Volvo, whose keys were on a hook by the front door, and onto the lane. This was thickly hedged on both sides, its surface rockier than it used to be, thanks to the recent heavy traffic. It curved as well as sloped and the gap in the hedge allowing access to the field was at the point where the junction ahead became visible. He was walking by memory, trusting his feet. His jogging pants were deep maroon but the top he’d pulled on had a silvery sheen, and if there were moonlight he’d show up as a ghost; a disturbance in the dark, the shape of half a man. But there was no moonlight; there was cloud cover, and the black vault of a February night, and a bitter chill he was increasingly aware of, and then—no warning—the twin headlights of a parked vehicle at the top of the lane, pointing in his direction. He was pinned like a butterfly against a velvet cloth. Noises erupted behind him; not a circus, but a battery of urgent whispers. Torch beams picked him out as he reached the gap in the hedge, and slipped into the field.

About

A gripping spy thriller from the bestselling author of Slow Horses, about a disastrous MI5 mission in Cold War Berlin—an absolute must-read for Slough House fans.

Set in the MI5 world of Slow Horses, now an Apple Original series from Apple TV+ starring Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas.


Two years ago, a hostile prime minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating “historical over-reaching” by the British Secret Service. Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so.

But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. Now the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust—and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away by the pounding London rain.

Until the eve of Monochrome’s shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin—an operation that ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history.

The Secret Hours is a dazzling entry point into Mick Herron’s body of work, a standalone spy thriller that is at once unnerving, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny. It is also the breathtaking secret history that Slough House fans have been waiting for.

Praise

Praise for The Secret Hours

Finalist for the Libby Book Award for Best Thriller
Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award
Shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award
Nominated for the ITW Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel

Nominated for the Barry Award for Best Thriller
Nominated for the Strand Critics Award for Best Mystery Novel

A National Bestseller
A New York Times Best Thriller of 2023
An NPR Best Book of 2023
The Guardian Best Crime and Thrillers of 2023
An Air Mail Best Mystery Book of 2023

People Magazine's Best Books of Fall 2023
A Washington Post Noteworthy Book for September
An Amazon Best of the Month - Mystery/Thriller
A BookPage Best Mystery & Suspense Book of 2023
An ABA Indie Next Pick for September 2023
A CrimeReads Top 10 Book for September
A Powell's Pick of the Month
★★★★ Starred Reviews from Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Library Journal and Booklist

“An intricate espionage thriller from Herron, whose Slough House series is the basis for Apple TV+'s Slow Horses. Bonus: This terrific standalone offers an enticing slice of Slough House's origin story.”
People Magazine

“Anyone who has yet to discover the particular genius of Mick Herron, author of the darkly hilarious 'Slow Horses' espionage novels, is in for a serious treat. It’s not necessary to read any of his other books before reading this one, but once you start, you’ll want to read them all.”
The New York Times Book Review

“This page-turning stand-alone novel is a perfect entry point into the eccentric world of civil servants and spies that Herron’s Slough House series so wittily portrays.”
The Washington Post

“A special treat . . . Herron’s narrative moves with ease between present and past, England and Germany, action and satire, propelled by prescient commentary on the passage of time . . . The Secret Hours culminates in an astonishing denouement that should startle even the savviest spy-fiction fan.”
—Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

“Mick Herron’s latest thriller connects the dots between the sins of the post-Cold War era and the messy, contemporary misadventures of the popular Slough House spy series, it’s also fantastic as a standalone. That said, if you’ve read the previous books, the breadcrumbs are a delight to follow.”
—NPR

“Herron keeps up his gravity-defying balancing act: belly-laugh spy spoof on one side, elegiac state-of-the-nation satire on the other, with a thin, taut line of polished prose between.”
Financial Times

The Secret Hours is a stand-alone novel on the periphery of the 'Slow Horses' universe whose focus is a slow-walking inquiry into historical wrongdoing in MI5, Britain’s domestic spy service. The book is classic Herron, featuring mordant humor, bureaucratic power plays, underappreciated functionaries, bravura action sequences and at least one unexpected casualty.”
—Sarah Lyall, The New York Times

“Herron is meticulous in his depictions of tradecraft and the dark corners where spooks ply their trade, but he is an unambiguous, 21st-century cynic . . . The Secret Hours is described as a stand-alone, familiar Slough House characters figure in the story under code names, and it contains revelations about their pasts that fans of those books and the Slow Horses TV series won’t want to miss.”
—Air Mail

The Secret Hours has all of Herron’s tight plotting and characteristically low-key humour. It’s an excellent standalone, but fans of his Slough House books would do well to pick it up too.”
―The Guardian

“Great Britain has a long, rich history of how-it-really-works espionage fiction, and Mick Herron—stealthy as a secret agent—has written himself to the very top of the list. If you haven't already been recruited, start with The Secret Hours—all Herron's trademark strengths are here: tension, intrigue, observation, humor, absurdity . . . and pitch-perfect prose.”
—Lee Child

"The Secret Hours is wonderful. It’s Mick Herron at his best, taking us into a dark world where there is high action, a spinning moral compass, and hidden motives on every page. And, oh, yes, the fun—Herron’s greatest talent may be the examination of serious things with a perfectly wry sense of humor."
Michael Connelly

“I doubt I’ll read a more enjoyable novel all year. The Secret Hours has it all: thrilling action scenes, crackling dialogue, characters to infuriate and beguile, and a neatly intricate plot. And through it all cuts Herron’s acerbic wit, its effect heightened by the glimpses he allows us, from time to time, from his world to ours.”
—Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train

“A deft knockout of a story, with an arc of history, written with humor and style. Mick Herron is one of the best writers of spy fiction working today.”
—Martin Cruz Smith

“There’s wit and suspense on almost every page of The Secret Hours, where the good guys are bad, the bad guys are worse and the reader is in luck.”
The Seattle Times

“Jam-packed with the kind of acidic insults fans of 'Slow Horses' love.”
Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A terrific stand-alone novel.”
—Mike Lupica, New York Daily News

“How good does new British espionage get? Read Mick Herron’s fabulous stand-alone new book and don’t weep for the loss of le Carré. As Herron proved in his brilliant Slough House series, his world of spies can hold its own with the best and here, he takes us back to where the master started: Cold War Berlin and a mission gone wrong.”
—Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail

“Manages to be witty and twisty even as it second-guesses the cleverness and heroism of spies themselves.”
—Slate.com

“The most mesmerizing spy novel you could hope to find since John le Carré left us . . . Herron has gifted us a magnificently plotted and charactered puzzle, marvellously written. Enjoy.”
Winnipeg Free-Press

“Superb . . . The expertly crafted tale probes political machinations, bureaucratic holdups, and the temptations of revenge. Come for the banter and Briticisms; stay for the conviction that it’s never too late to right past wrongs.”
Christian Science Monitor

“Simply a masterful new book from today’s premier espionage author.”
—Clea Simon, The Arts Fuse

“Because none of the Slough House characters are mentioned by name, The Secret Hours is not only a gripping standalone for the uninitiated, but also an ideal introduction to the pleasures of the series.”
Everything Zoomer

“[Herron] proves himself a modern rival to Ian Fleming and John Le Carré... This satire-flecked thriller should establish Herron as an institution.”
―Sunday Times (UK)

“[A] terrific new novel . . . Herron's traditional tradecraft is on show―the Blackadderesque relish of words, the spy-like manipulation of the reader, the understanding of how the English fend off the serious with humour.”
―The Times (UK)

"Herron is a subtle writer who offers a great deal, including psychological insights that stay with you long after the clever plot is complete."
―Literary Review (UK)

“Herron brings a le Carré setup (spies investigating spies) to this exemplary thriller that’s equal parts acerbic and illuminating.”
—CrimeReads

“Amazing and so, so funny.”
—WAMC The Roundtable

“It’s not all Aston Martin sports cars and martinis ('shaken, not stirred') in Herron’s spy world... Billed as a standalone, this smartly written, funny, and complex thriller is a good introduction for newbies, but fans of Herron’s 'Slough House' books will recognize a few crossover characters.”
—Wilda Williams, First Clue Reviews

“Herron continues his winning streak... This novel, filled with acid wit, political pokes, and a veritable basketful of 'Slough House' Easter eggs, will thrill longtime Herron fans and delight newcomers and aficionados of cracking-good spy fiction.”
Library Journal, Starred Review

“Hailed as a twenty-first-century Le Carré, Herron is a master at portraying the dark, disturbing world of espionage... Gripping, cryptic, tragic, and suspenseful, this must-read will keep readers riveted from first page to last.”
Booklist, Starred Review

“Espionage fans of all stripes will devour this exemplary outing.”
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Sly and suspenseful, The Secret Hours is both a marvelous standalone novel and a stunning companion to Herron’s Slough House series.”
BookPage, Starred Review

“Readers who’ve joined Herron in following the Slow Horses in a series of rollicking, scary novels won’t be surprised to learn that everyone here looks down their noses at everyone else, that everyone has a price, and that conflicts within MI5 are much more likely to turn lethal than conflicts outside, against England’s nominal enemies.”
Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Mick Herron

"The best in a generation, by some estimations, and irrefutably the funniest."
—Jill Lepore, The New Yorker

“Intricate plotting, full of twists . . . Herron can certainly write a real spy story, with all the misdirection and sleight of hand that requires. But it’s the surly Slough House mood, the eccentric characters, and Herron’s very black, very dry sense of humor that made me read one after the other without a break.”
—Laura Miller, Slate.com

“Out of a wickedly imagined version of MI5, [Herron] has spun works of diabolical plotting and high-spirited cynicism, their pages filled with sardonic wit, their characters approaching the surreal.”
The Wall Street Journal

“The sharpest spy fiction since John le Carré.”
—NPR's Fresh Air

“Mick Herron never tells a suspense story in the expected way . . . In Herron's book, there is no hiding under the desk.”
The New York Times Book Review

“Stylish and engaging.”
The Washington Post

“[Herron] really is funny and his cynicism is belied, here and there, by flashes of the mingled tenderness and anger that seem to define Britain’s post-Brexit self-reflections.”
USA Today

Author

Mick Herron was born in Newcastle and has a degree in English from Balliol College, Oxford. He is the author of the Oxford series, the Slough House series, the standalone books This Is What Happened, Nobody Walks, and Reconstruction, and the novella The List. His work has been nominated for the Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and CWA Steel Dagger Awards, and he has won an Ellery Queen Readers Award and the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel. He lives in Oxford. View titles by Mick Herron

Excerpt

The worst smell in the world is dead badger. He’d encountered it on his morning walk down a green lane; had caught the odour without seeing the corpse, but had guessed what it was before returning later with a shovel. Whether they all smelled that bad or whether this one had expired of noxious causes he didn’t know. As it turned out, he couldn’t do anything about it either—the creature had crawled into a tangled nest of roots to die, and it would require heavy machinery and a strong stomach to recover it. Lacking the former, and not wanting to put the latter to the test, Max opted for a third way: he’d walk a different route for a while, and see if one of the local farmers shifted it in the meantime. Which was why he wasn’t sure the badger would still be there a couple of nights later, when he was running for his life.
     The first of the intruders entered through the kitchen window. Max hadn’t been asleep, though anyone watching the cottage would have been forgiven for thinking otherwise: the lights were out, the curtains drawn. He’d been lying in bed, not so much struggling with insomnia as letting it do its worst, when he’d heard the window latch being finessed open: a piece of wire sliding through the draughty gap he’d been meaning to repair, lifting the metal hook from its eye. Quieter than taking out the glass, but a long way short of silent. He’d pulled on jogging pants and a sweatshirt, slipped into a pair of trainers, then froze in place, caught between two lives, trying to remember where he’d stashed his flight kit . . . You could worry you were losing your mind. That they were coming too late, and you’d long ago turned into whoever you were pretending to be.
      (Max Janáček. Retired (early) academic; still footling around with a history book, but mostly just passing the days—taking long walks, cooking slow meals, losing himself in Dickens.)
     The stairs were an out-of-tune orchestra of squeaks and whistles, every tread announcing that Peter or the wolf were on their way, unless you’d practised descending, and knew where to put your feet. So almost noiselessly he reached the sitting room, whose doorway was catty-corner to the kitchen, and plucked the poker from its stand by the wood-burning stove. Not a great weapon, for all its iconic status in fiction. You needed high ceilings to accommodate your swing. Max Janáček understood a good swing: he was the man you saw walking the lanes, beheading dandelions with a stick. Who lived in a five-hundred-year-old cottage in North Devon, and could be counted on to do the neighbourly thing: keep an eye out for the old folk, whose company he was on the threshold of joining; litter-pick after the bank holiday rush; sign the petition resisting the makeshift industrial estate down the lane—numbering seventeen cabins now. This and more he’d been for more than twenty years, and whether the locals took him at face value or gave less than a tuppenny damn had become irrelevant, or had done until someone slipped the latch on his kitchen window and climbed inside more or less gracefully, breaking no crockery, dislodging no pans, and moving across the flagged floor in careful silence, intent—it would seem—on unlocking the back door and allowing his comrades ingress. Or her comrades, as it turned out. Whether Max would have jabbed her so hard at the base of the skull with the poker, then slammed her head on the floor when she fell had he known it was a woman beneath the break-in gear was something he could ponder at leisure, if he survived the night. Meanwhile, he checked her for weapons. She was carrying a Taser, which put her outside the range of opportunist burglars, but no ID, and nothing to indicate what she was up to. But he had to work on the assumption that she wasn’t alone, an assumption confirmed when he picked up the landline to hear the deep silence of a well on a windless night. Inside the cottage—anywhere down this lane—his mobile made for a useful paperweight. So sitting tight and calling the cavalry wasn’t an option, and wouldn’t necessarily have been a sensible move anyway. Sometimes, it was the cavalry you had to watch out for.
     The cottage sat midway down a sloping lane, and was half of a twinned pair. In the other lived Old Dolly, who had probably forgotten a time when she’d simply been Dolly. Certainly she’d earned the Old by the time Max moved in, and still regarded him as three quarters a stranger, though he’d long reached the point where he was doing most of her shopping, all of her firewood gathering and a strong seven-eighths of listening to her bang on about immigration, which left him less uneasy than her habit of leaving a gas ring lit, to save striking a match for every cigarette. The next cottage along, a hundred yards distant, had been empty since Jonas Tripplehorn had gone to live with his daughter in Exeter; the cottage opposite—“cottage” by local tradition; it had four bedrooms—was a second home, and invariably unoccupied during the week. And further down the lane were other dwellings, some housing young families, some retired labourers, and some home-based industries—IT and retro clothing; bespoke greetings cards and editorial services—and beyond them, on the other side of the railway bridge across which the London-Plymouth service rattled, the field now playing host to the makeshift estate which had roused such local ire. Corrugated iron structures had been erected, one at a time, and makeshift barns built, now storing the kind of heavy machinery you could dismember a dead badger with. Since this shanty town’s foundation, traffic had multiplied tenfold, most of the vehicles heavily laden vans, with scaffolding poles tethered to flatbeds as the drivers headed to renovation jobs in the surrounding area; work which hadn’t extended as far as repairing the potholes their vehicles left behind. Even now, as Max slipped out of a side window, he could hear an engine coughing in that direction, as if it were having one last drag before laying down for the night.
     When he hit the ground he dropped into a crouch, and waited to see what happened next.
     Which was nothing, for a while. A pair of small owls hooted in the distance, a familiar duet of hunt and swoop, while on the main road, a quarter mile away, a lorry banjaxed the quiet, hauling freight westward. There was cloud cover. Max knew the skies well enough to guess what stars he’d be looking at, this particular time and date, but had to be content to see them with his mind’s eye only. More practically, from where he crouched he had a cross-section view of the lane and a full-frontal of the cottage opposite, which enjoyed enough shadowy places—the baggy hedge in front; the nook behind its outjutting porch—to conceal a ninja army. But if there were an actual professional threat lurking there, would they have sent a lone warrior into his kitchen? One he’d made pretty short work of, come to that? But it was pointless trying to second-guess an enemy whose purpose he didn’t know. The owls hooted again. You could set your watch by them. If you were a mouse, it was probably wise to.
     He wasn’t sure how long the woman in the kitchen would be out, but no more than a few minutes would be his guess. It wasn’t like calculated violence had been a habit even when he’d moved in circles where, if not the norm, it was at least an accepted accomplishment. No: the force with which he’d banged her head on the floor had more to do with outraged householder sensibilities than long dormant expertise. It would be sensible, though, to at least attempt to don the thought processes of the professional. Whoever they were, they suspected already and would soon know that their first incursion had failed. What they did next depended on their operational priorities. They wanted to be quiet, but they also wanted Max, and they might abandon thoughts of the former if the latter was within their reach. What, after all, would be the outcome of pandemonium? Lights going on in cottages, and a phone call to the police? Which might bring a rescue party, but not within the next thirty minutes, given the village’s isolation. So it was a risk they’d doubtless take. In which case, he’d better formulate a response to an all-out assault on the cottage.
     Legging it through the dark was the best he came up with.
     And this wasn’t the worst idea ever. They’d presumably arrived in a vehicle, maybe more than one, but they hadn’t driven down the lane, or he’d have heard. So they had likely parked at the junction, where another lane headed to the main road, and a choice of exit routes. That would be their objective, and whether he’d be lying back here with a hole in him or trussed up in the boot of their vehicle while they achieved it, he couldn’t know. The Taser, rather than—say—a knife or a gun or a Cruise missile suggested that killing him wasn’t Plan A, but all plans have contingencies, and if they couldn’t take him alive, they might prefer to leave him dead. Neither outcome held appeal for Max, who, if he could make it twenty yards up the road, could slip through the hedge and into the field where their vehicles couldn’t follow. He knew the terrain; they presumably didn’t. He’d walked that field at night times without number; he’d lain on his back and admired the stars there, which was not a habit he boasted about to the neighbours. He wouldn’t claim to know every bump and hollow, but familiarity should give him an edge. Still, he was a long way from being persuaded that this was the way to go when the decision was made for him: a familiar clunk and sigh told him the front door was swinging open. The woman he’d laid low was back on her feet, and her reappearance had galvanised the waiting troops: a shape, two shapes, materialised out of the darkness and ran to join her. There could be others. If he was going to move, it had to be now.
People entered his cottage, and over his head an eerie light broke through the window. They were using torches, and his sill clutter—plant pots, vases, candles on saucers—came briefly alive, casting ghostly shapes onto the night air. Slipping out of the lee of the wall, he crept round the Volvo, whose keys were on a hook by the front door, and onto the lane. This was thickly hedged on both sides, its surface rockier than it used to be, thanks to the recent heavy traffic. It curved as well as sloped and the gap in the hedge allowing access to the field was at the point where the junction ahead became visible. He was walking by memory, trusting his feet. His jogging pants were deep maroon but the top he’d pulled on had a silvery sheen, and if there were moonlight he’d show up as a ghost; a disturbance in the dark, the shape of half a man. But there was no moonlight; there was cloud cover, and the black vault of a February night, and a bitter chill he was increasingly aware of, and then—no warning—the twin headlights of a parked vehicle at the top of the lane, pointing in his direction. He was pinned like a butterfly against a velvet cloth. Noises erupted behind him; not a circus, but a battery of urgent whispers. Torch beams picked him out as he reached the gap in the hedge, and slipped into the field.