Praise for The Secret Hours Finalist for the Libby Book Award for Best ThrillerLonglisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award Nominated for the Barry Award for Best Thriller New York Times Best Thriller of 2023The Guardian Best Crime and Thrillers of 2023An Air Mail Best Mystery Book of 2023 People Magazine's Best Books of Fall 2023Washington Post Noteworthy Book for SeptemberA BookPage Best Mystery & Suspense Book of 2023 A CrimeReads Top 10 Book for September A Powell's Pick of the MonthPublishers Weekly , BookPage , Library Journal and Booklist Slow Horses . Bonus: This terrific standalone offers an enticing slice of Slough House's origin story.”—People Magazine —The New York Times Book Review —The Washington Post The Secret Hours culminates in an astonishing denouement that should startle even the savviest spy-fiction fan.” —Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal —NPR —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 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 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 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 —Martin Cruz Smith The Secret Hours , where the good guys are bad, the bad guys are worse and the reader is in luck.”—The Seattle Times —Minneapolis Star-Tribune —Mike Lupica, New York Daily News —Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail —Slate.com —Winnipeg Free-Press —Christian Science Monitor —Clea Simon, The Arts Fuse 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 ―Sunday Times (UK)―The Times (UK)―Literary Review (UK)—CrimeReads —WAMC The Roundtable —Wilda Williams, First Clue Reviews —Library Journal , Starred Review —Booklist , Starred Review —Publishers Weekly , Starred Review The Secret Hours is both a marvelous standalone novel and a stunning companion to Herron’s Slough House series.”—BookPage , Starred Review —Kirkus Reviews Praise for Mick Herron —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker —Laura Miller, Slate.com —The Wall Street Journal —NPR's Fresh Air —The New York Times Book Review —The Washington Post —USA Today
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…with a perfectly wry sense of humor.”
New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly
Thrilling action scenes, crackling dialogue, characters to infuriate and beguile, and a neatly intricate plot. And through it all cuts Herron’s acerbic wit.”
New York Times bestselling author Paula Hawkins
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.”
Gerard Doyle performs…with such dry resignation that it is often laugh-out-loud funny…Doyle’s vocal control is masterly, his pacing, range, and attention to detail a perfect match for Herron’s, which is highest praise. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
"A perfect entry point into the eccentric world of civil servants and spies that Herron’s Slough House series so wittily portrays.”
Jam-packed with the kind of acidic insults fans of Slow Horses love.”
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.”
[For] how-it-really-works espionage fiction…tension, intrigue, observation, humor, absurdity…and pitch-perfect prose.”
#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child
★ 09/01/2023
"Slough House" series author Herron (Bad Actors ) continues his winning streak with this excellent stand-alone spy thriller. As with previous "Slough House" books, underlings are manipulated like game pieces by their MI5 bosses. Some will rise to the occasion and some will not, and nobody is quite what they seem—to the delight of readers who will enjoy connecting events of parallel stories. In the present, civil servants Malcolm Kyle and Griselda Fleet are assigned to Monochrome, an inquiry looking into "historical overreaching" by MI5 agents. They're hamstrung from the start by MI5's top spy, known as First Desk, who blocks all their attempts to get documentation and looks forward to Monochrome's imminent disbanding due to another political changing of the guard. But on the last day of the inquiry, Fleet and Kyle receive a top-secret file concerning a horribly botched case in 1994 Berlin. Readers are whisked into that story, which features wide-eyed newbie Alison, sent to the divided city to spy on agents working there. VERDICT 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.—Liz French
Gerard Doyle performs this stand-alone dispatch from Mick Herron's cynical "spook street" world with such dry resignation that it is often laugh-out-loud funny, or would be if it weren't so believable. In his Slough House novels (and their TV adaptations, the riveting "Slow Horses") Herron is doing for MI-5 what Dickens did for Chancery and the Circumlocution Office. This novel omits Slough House, but that series' icily corrupt character known as First Desk is either the same woman or cut from the same cloth, and the hapless innocents, villains, and cogs in the system are similarly, wonderfully (or frighteningly) vintage Herron. Doyle's vocal control is masterly, his pacing, range, and attention to detail a perfect match for Herron's, which is highest praise. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
2023-06-21
The Monochrome panel, convened by an adviser to the prime minister with a special grudge against the British intelligence service to gather evidence whether (read: that) the pencil pushers at Regent’s Park have exceeded their authority, calls witnesses from an interminable list, questions them at tedious length, and then, once it establishes that their testimony is unsuitable or meaningless, destroys its notes on them because they’ll never make it into Monochrome’s final report. Civil servant Griselda Fleet has agreed to serve as the panel’s first chair only because her precarious financial situation means that she can't afford to get canned. Ambitious flack Malcolm Kyle, the second chair, has resigned himself to the fact that his advancement is on hold as long as he’s serving the Crown this way. Then several things jolt everyone to attention. Someone tries to kidnap and kill Max Janacek, a retired academic who has a history with MI5. Someone plants a folder filled with highly classified information on Kyle. And when the worthies of Monochrome decide to pursue the information in that folder—information that never should have come their way—they turn up a witness with jaw-dropping news to impart about an operation that Station House ran in Berlin years ago. 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.
As usual, there’s a lot here to swallow. Fans will rejoice to see MI5 survive despite its members’ best efforts.
