During the same period, Mick Herron wrote a series of short stories, many of which were published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

In 2008, Herron began writing the Slough House spy series, featuring MI5 agents who have been relegated to administrative “dead-end” positions due to serious professional mistakes or personal shortcomings. The first novel in the series, Slow Horses, was published in 2010. A few years later, it was described by The Daily Telegraph as one of the “twenty greatest spy novels of all time.”

The eight novels in the series have been translated into twenty languages and have received major awards, including the Steel Dagger and Gold Dagger from the Crime Writers’ Association. They have also been successfully adapted for television, starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, the leader of the “slow horses.”