Mick Herron Books

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Award winning author Mick Herron was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. His work is from the crime and thriller genre. He got his degree in English from Balliol College, Oxford. He made his debut in fiction with the novel “Down Cemetery Road” in 2003; it is the first novel about Zoe Boehm, a private detective in Oxford. In the year 2010, he started writing about MI5 agents, the lead character (who is named Jackson Lamb) of it was influenced by Andy Dalziel (which is a character that Reginald Hill wrote about). He also likes to play squash.

Mick Herron is an English author of crime fiction, who has had success with both his Zoe Boehm and Sarah Tucker series of books and his Slough House series of books. Herron has also won the CWA Gold Dagger for his novel Dead Lions, and has been shortlisted for several other awards during his careers, which has spanned well over a decade. Although many of Herron’s novels are set in the English city of Oxford, where Herron calls home, he has also set one of his books, Smoke & Whispers, in his city of birth, Newcastle.

Mick Herron was born in the English city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, but it was in the city of Oxford where he really cut his teeth, earning a degree in English from Balliol College. Using the skills he learnt at Balliol College, Herron wrote his first book, Down Cemetery Road, which is the first book in the Zoe Boehm and Sarah Tucker series of books, which was published in 2003. Down Cemetery Road is set in Oxford, a city Herron knows well after moving there to study in the city, and it introduces us to the character of Sarah Tucker, a young woman who is bored with her life, and who tries to find a girl who has gone missing after a home explosion.

Herron followed up Down Cemetery Road with the novel The Last Voice You Hear, which is part of the same series, but this time focuses on the character of Zoe Boehm, who is a private investigator in the city. Boehm is hired for a case to find the missing partner of a woman who is killed by a train after he fails to show up for his lover’s funeral. However, without knowing the man, things become tricky for Boehm, and she struggles to keep the investigation on track as her past comes back to haunt her.

Reconstruction is the first standalone book to be written by Mick Herron, but it is, once again, set in the city of Oxford. It starts with a man breaking into a school armed with a gun. However, he is hoping not to have to take any lives, and only wants to speak to an MI6 accountant who knew his lover, who has vanished, along with a large sum of cash. Our gunman wants to get to the bottom of the mystery of his missing partner, but he’s not the only person who is harbouring a secret. Reconstruction was published in 2008.

In 2010, Herron moved away from the Zoe Boehm and Sarah Tucker series of novels and created the Slough House series. The Slough House series is based around a team of intelligence service team members who have been taken out of active duty for messing up during the course of their work. It is overseen by Jackson Lamb.

The first book in the Slough House series is Slow Horses, which not only introduces us to the character of Jackson Lamb, but also River Cartwright, a former member of the intelligence service who now spends his time transcribing mobile phone conversations of suspects. However, Cartwright finds an opportunity to get back into the service’s good books when a young man is abducted and his abductors threaten to behead him during a live internet broadcast. Soon it becomes the job of Slough House to save the young man’s life before he meets a gruesome end.

The second book in the Slough House series, Dead Lions, is book which has gained Mick Herron the most column inches and critical success, as he picked up the CWA Gold Dagger award in 2013 for his work. The main plot of Dead Lions focuses on Jackson Lamb as he sets off on the hunt for a KGB operative who, technically, doesn’t exist, but starts to appear in London, dredging up a conspiracy that many had long forgotten about. Lamb’s team need to pull together and set aside their differences to stop a terrorist plot which has been brewing for years.

Mick Herron has written the “Zoe Boehm/ Sarah Tucker” series (a series of novels that alternates between two different main characters), “The Slough House/ Jackson Lamb” series, and some stand alone novels. He has penned short stories as well that appear in Ellery Queen. Mick Herron has said that in the books about Zoe and Sarah, he switches perspectives in the books to look at different points of view. Sarah feels more and is concerned about doing the right thing and how things will turn out. Zoe just cares about getting the job done, no matter what and is stubborn.

MICK HERRON AWARDS

Mick Herron has been nominated or won quite a few awards in his time as a writer. He won a CWA Gold Dagger award for his 2013 novel “Dead Lions”, winning for the best crime novel. “Dolphin Junction” (a novella) was one of the two winners of the Ellery Queen Readers award in 2009. He has been shortlisted for two Ian Fleming Steel Daggers, once in 2015 and again in 2016 for the novels “Nobody Walks” and “Real Tigers”. He was long listed for the same award in 2010 for the novel “Slow Horses”. He was shortlisted for both the Barry (best thriller novel) and Macavity (for the best novel) Prizes for the novel “Dead Lions”. He was also shortlisted for a CWA for Best Crime Novel for “Real Tigers” in the year 2016.

BEST MICK HERRON BOOKS

For those readers looking to get into novels by Mick Herron, this section will help with that. It will go over the novels “Down Cemetery Road”, “The Last Voice You Hear”, and “Why We Die”.

Down Cemetery Road: This is the first novel in the “Oxford Investigations” series and was released in the year 2003. A house explodes in a suburb in Oxford, after which, a child is taken. A young married woman, named Sarah Tucker, while bored and unhappy with the way her life is going, gets obsessed with finding her. She starts questioning everything that she thought she knew. Her attempts to investigate prove that people who were supposed to be dead are still alive, and those who are alive, are starting to die.

It starts on a quiet neighborhood and finishes on an unwelcoming and distant Scottish island. She is with a companion who is also being hunted by killer officials on this journey.

The Last Voice You Hear: This is the second novel in the “Oxford Investigations” series and was released in the year 2004. A woman dies under a train’s wheels, and her lover man does not show up to the funeral. Zoe Boehm (an Oxford investigator) is hired to locate him. She has her own problems she is trying to work on that are harming her future. It gets more complex for her when she tries to figure out a woman she does not know, nor never met, and find a guy that could literally be anyone.

She gets close two different people both are criminals, but different kinds. She wonders if the man she is trying to find has already found her.

Why We Die: This is the third novel in the “Oxford Investigations” series and was released in the year 2006. Tim Whitby checks into a hotel in Oxford and does not intend of checking out. He meets a woman named Katrina Blake, and is in need of being rescued.

Arkle, Baxter, and Trent get their family’s business but do not plan on making a go of it, as there are easier ways of getting rich.

Zoe Boehm says that she will get the men wearing masks that stole from Harold Sweeney’s shop. It is supposed to help her pay off her tax bill. She does not plan on dying for it.

Arkle has got himself a crossbow. Tim no longer has a purpose in life. Katrina, battered though she might be, still has some secrets of her own. Death and taxes are not something that can be avoided forever.

Mick Herron FAQs

Q: What nationalist is the author Mick Herron?

A: The author Mick Herron is English. He was born in the city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, and now lives in Oxford, and works in London.

Q: What is the name of Mick Herron’s first novel?

A: The first novel Mick Herron had published was Down Cemetery Road, the first book in the Zoe Boehm and Sarah Tucker series, and it was published in 2003.

When Does The Next Mick Herron book come out?

Mick Herron doesn't seem to have an upcoming book. Their newest book is The Secret Hours and was released on September, 12th 2023.

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