Clown Town (Slough House #9)

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

Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman

‘They used to call our shop the Circus. Well if this is a circus, Jackson, you’re in charge of the clowns.’

Old spies grow ridiculous, David Cartwright used to say, but forgot to add they can be dangerous too, especially if they’ve fallen on hard times – as Diana Taverner learns when the past lands on her desk. An operation carried out during the height of the Troubles laid bare the ugly side of state security, and those involved are threatening to expose details. But every threat hides an opportunity, and the would-be blackmailer is soon being used as Taverner’s solution to a much newer problem.

Cartwright himself is long buried, and has left his library to the Spooks’ College, where it turns out that one of the books has gone missing. Or perhaps never existed . . . His grandson, River Cartwright, has time to kill while waiting to be passed fit for work, and investigating the secrets his grandfather’s li­brary hid seems a harmless activity. But nothing involving the slow horses stays harmless for long.

Louisa Guy is pondering her future, but before making any big decisions, she might as well check River’s not about to come a cropper. Shirley Dander is wondering if the new kid, Ash Khan, is as annoying as she seems. Roddy Ho wants the team to know that his tattoo is a hummingbird, and not, as Lech Wicinski claims, a platypus. And Catherine Standish just wants everyone to play nice.

As far as Lamb’s concerned, they should all be at their desks – when Taverner starts plotting mischief people get hurt, and Lamb has no plans to send in the clowns. On the other hand, if the clowns ignore his instructions, any harm that befalls them is hardly his fault.

But they’re his clowns. And if they don’t all come home, there’ll be a reckoning.

Author Biography

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 Zoe 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.