Imprint
- Baskerville
- Baskerville
- John Murray
Jackson Lamb Thriller, Fiction, Crime & mystery, Thriller / suspense
Dead Lions is the second book in the Sunday Times bestselling, award-winning, Slough House series, featuring Mick Herron's much loved band of disgraced spies, led by Jackson Lamb, 'the most fascinating and irresistible thriller series hero to emerge since Jack Reacher' (Sunday Times)
*Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman*
'The new king of the spy thriller' Mail on Sunday
From the Intelligence Service purgatory that is Slough House, where disgraced spies are sent to see out the dregs of their careers, Jackson Lamb is on his way to Oxford, where a former spook has turned up dead on a bus. Dickie Bow was a talented streetwalker once, good at following people and bringing home their secrets. He was in Berlin with Lamb, back in the day. But he's not an obvious target for assassination in the here and now.
On Dickie's phone Lamb finds the last message he ever left, which hints that an old-time Moscow-style op is being run in the Intelligence Service's back-yard. Once a spook, always a spook, and even being dead doesn't mean you can't uncover secrets.
Dickie Bow might have tailed his last target, but Lamb and his crew of no-hopers are about to go live.
'Mick Herron is an incredible writer' Mark Billingham
'The spycraft of le Carre refracted through the blackly comic vision of Joseph Heller's Catch-22' Financial Times
Praise for Dead Lions: Slough House Thriller 2
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Praise for Mick Herron's Jackson Lamb series: - .
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The finest new crime series this Millennium - Mail on Sunday
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Mick Herron is the real deal - Irish Times
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I can't wait to read what Mick Herron writes next - Crime Fiction Lover
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Surely among the finest British spy fiction of the past 20 years - Metro
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Herron has the comedy and eye to rival Len Deighton - Sunday Telegraph
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Herron may be the most literate, and slyest, thriller writer in English today - Publishers Weekly
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Delightful ... with a dry humour reminiscent of Greene and Waugh - Sunday Times
Reader reviews (1)
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Dead Lions is the second novel in the Slough House series by British author, Mick Herron. Slough House is where the spook screw-ups from MI5 who, for some reason or other, can’t be sacked, are sent. There they are set such tedious, mind-numbing tasks it’s hoped they will be fed-up enough to quit. Slough House doesn’t have a big staff, currently just seven under the control of Jackson Lamb. They had a bit of unexpected action a few months ago, so there are empty desks and a few new faces. Ordinarily, there are no ops from Slough House: the Slow Horses can’t be trusted with anything that matters. But the recent death, on a bus, of Cold War spy, Dickie Bow has Jackson Lamb looking closer, and soon his smartest young spy, River Cartwright is in place in a sleepy Cotswolds village trying to track down a Russian agent. Meanwhile, two of Lamb’s slow horses are seconded by River’s nemesis at Regent’s Park, James (Spider) Webb, for “babysitting” duty in Russian oil talks. Is there a connection? Once again, Herron gives the reader a fast-paced spy novel of a very different sort. The premise is original, and the execution is inspired. The characters are all credibly flawed, their dialogue is full of dry wit, and there is plenty of humour, most of it very black and very British, with an abundance of laugh out loud moments. There are twists and red herrings and the reader will find it hard not to cheer these misfits on as they do their best. Readers will be pleased to learn there are two and a half further volumes of this series for their entertainment and enjoyment. Another brilliant read!
Marianne Vincent
Rated 5
Mick Herron
Mick Herron is the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Slough House thrillers, which have won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award, two CWA Daggers, been published in twenty-five languages, and are the basis of a major TV series starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb. He is also the author of the ZoA Boehm series, and the standalone novels Reconstruction and This is What Happened. Mick was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives in Oxford.
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