Espionage. Blackmail. Revenge. Cunning. Slapstick. State secrets dating back to the fall of the Berlin Wall. All this and more in a tight package of five novellas by Mick Herron, CWA Gold Dagger-winning author of Slow Horses.

Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service “to investigate historical over-reaching.” Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn.

When a young man breaks into South Oxford Nursery School with a gun and takes a group of hostages, teacher Louise Kennedy is fearful. But Jaime Segura isn’t there on a homicidal mission. Bad Sam Chapman - head of the intelligence service’s internal security force, the Dogs - tries to find out what Jaime is after. But the only person Jaime will talk to is Ben Whistler, an MI6 colleague of Jaime’s lover, Miro - who has gone missing with a quarter of a billion pounds....

Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things—and people—aren’t always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It’s no easy job—especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA but was last seen discussing business with someone from the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force.

When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a young girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah Tucker becomes obsessed with finding her. Accustomed to dull chores in a childless household and hosting her husband’s wearisome business clients for dinner, Sarah suddenly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew, as her investigation reveals that people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead.

When Zoë Boehm agrees to track down the gang who knocked over Sweeney’s jewellery shop, she certainly doesn’t expect to wind up in a coffin. But she’s about to become entangled with a strange collection of characters, starting with suicidal Tim Whitby, who’s dedicating what’s left of his life to protecting Katrina Blake from her late husband’s brothers, Arkle and Trent. Unfortunately for Zoë, Arkle has a crossbow, Tim has nothing left to lose and even Katrina has her secrets.

The death of Tom Bettany's estranged 26-year-old son brings him back to London. His return sparks the interest of everyone from mobsters to MI5 officers - he may have thought he left his old life as a spy behind, but nobody just walks away. Tom Bettany is working at a meat processing plant in France when he gets the voicemail from an English woman he doesn't know telling him that his estranged 26-year-old son is dead. Liam was smoking dope on his London balcony when he fell....

Now, for the first time, Herron’s short fiction has been collected into one volume. In Dolphin Junction, devoted fans and future converts alike will find much to amuse, delight, and terrify them. Five stand-alone nerve-racking and thrilling crime fiction stories are complemented by four mystery stories featuring the Oxford wife-and-husband detective team of shrewd Zoë Boehm and hapless Joe Silvermann. The collection also includes a peek into the past of Jackson Lamb, irascible top agent at Slough House.

When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as Private Detective Zoë Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zoë kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her? Coincidence is an excuse that soon appears pretty unconvincing. Sarah can’t leave until she’s found the answers to her questions, however dangerous they might turn out to be.

The story opens with the apparently accidental drowning of a sixth form student in the Norfolk countryside. As a matter of routine, or so it seems, the case passes across the desk of Detective Sergeant Smith, recently returned to work after an internal investigation into another case that has led to tensions between officers at Kings Lake police headquarters. As an ex-DCI, Smith could have retired by now, and it is clear that some of his superiors wish that he would do so.

Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie.

It’s not easy making the career jump from office-supplies-store middle manager to heroic interdimensional adventurer. At least, Jason tries to be heroic, but it's hard to be good when all your powers are evil. He’ll face off against cannibals, cultists, wizards, monsters...and that’s just on the first day. He’s going to need courage, he’s going to need wit, and he’s going to need some magic powers of his own. But first, he’s going to need pants.

Was the biggest case of his career the worst mistake he ever made? Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan stopped the serial child-killer dubbed "Mister Whisper", earning himself a commendation, a drinking problem, and a broken marriage in the process...When another child disappears a hundred miles north in the Highlands, Jack is sent to lead the investigation and bring the boy home. But as similarities between the two cases grow, could it be that Jack caught the wrong man all those years ago?

Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the city for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian’s evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian’s family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise.

Court Gentry is known as The Gray Man—a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible, and then fading away. And he always hits his target. But there are forces more lethal than Gentry in the world. And in their eyes, Gentry has just outlived his usefulness. Now, he is going to prove that for him, there's no gray area between killing for a living-and killing to stay alive.

Espionage. Blackmail. Revenge. Cunning. Slapstick. State secrets dating back to the fall of the Berlin Wall. All this and more in a tight package of five novellas by Mick Herron, CWA Gold Dagger-winning author of Slow Horses.

Eine wichtige Mitarbeiterin des Premierministers verschwindet spurlos, und ausgerechnet Claude Whelan, ehemaliger MI5-Chef und als solcher Erzfeind seiner Nachfolgerin Diana Taverner, soll sie finden. Doch die Spur führt ihn direkt zurück zum Hauptquartier im Regent's Park – und über Umwege und etliche Gehässigkeiten zu Jackson Lamb. Mit ihrer unvergleichlichen Mischung aus tiefschwarzem Humor, nerdigem Narzissmus und Chaos bringen die Slow Horses eine instabile Situation endgültig ins Wanken.

The death of Tom Bettany's estranged 26-year-old son brings him back to London. His return sparks the interest of everyone from mobsters to MI5 officers - he may have thought he left his old life as a spy behind, but nobody just walks away. Tom Bettany is working at a meat processing plant in France when he gets the voicemail from an English woman he doesn't know telling him that his estranged 26-year-old son is dead. Liam was smoking dope on his London balcony when he fell....

Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service “to investigate historical over-reaching.” Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn.

Now, for the first time, Herron’s short fiction has been collected into one volume. In Dolphin Junction, devoted fans and future converts alike will find much to amuse, delight, and terrify them. Five stand-alone nerve-racking and thrilling crime fiction stories are complemented by four mystery stories featuring the Oxford wife-and-husband detective team of shrewd Zoë Boehm and hapless Joe Silvermann. The collection also includes a peek into the past of Jackson Lamb, irascible top agent at Slough House.

When Zoë Boehm agrees to track down the gang who knocked over Sweeney’s jewellery shop, she certainly doesn’t expect to wind up in a coffin. But she’s about to become entangled with a strange collection of characters, starting with suicidal Tim Whitby, who’s dedicating what’s left of his life to protecting Katrina Blake from her late husband’s brothers, Arkle and Trent. Unfortunately for Zoë, Arkle has a crossbow, Tim has nothing left to lose and even Katrina has her secrets.

“Old spies grow ridiculous, River. Old spies aren’t much better than clowns.” Or so David Cartwright, the late retired head of MI5, used to tell his grandson. He forgot to add that old spies can be dangerous, too, especially if they’ve fallen on hard times—as River Cartwright is about to learn the hard way.

When a young man breaks into South Oxford Nursery School with a gun and takes a group of hostages, teacher Louise Kennedy is fearful. But Jaime Segura isn’t there on a homicidal mission. Bad Sam Chapman - head of the intelligence service’s internal security force, the Dogs - tries to find out what Jaime is after. But the only person Jaime will talk to is Ben Whistler, an MI6 colleague of Jaime’s lover, Miro - who has gone missing with a quarter of a billion pounds....

When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as Private Detective Zoë Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zoë kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her? Coincidence is an excuse that soon appears pretty unconvincing. Sarah can’t leave until she’s found the answers to her questions, however dangerous they might turn out to be.

When Caroline Daniels takes a deadly fall in front of a train and her lover fails to turn up at the funeral, Zoë Boehm wants nothing to do with the case. But Caroline's boss is persistent, and as Zoë attempts to unlock the secrets of a woman she's never met while in search of a man who could be anywhere, she starts to wonder if he's found her first. And if he has, will that make her the next victim?

DS George Cross can be rude, difficult and awkward with people. But his unfailing logic and dogged pursuit of the truth means his conviction rate is the best on the force. So when his police colleagues dismiss the death of a man as a squabble among Bristol's homeless community, Detective Sergeant George Cross is not convinced.

In a secluded farm house in the Pacific Northwest, a family has been slaughtered - and a teenage son has disappeared. Single mother and cop Emily Kenyon spearheads a dark hunt for a killer. But Emily's teenage daughter, Jenna, is one step ahead of her. Then another family is butchered, and another. As Emily fits the puzzle pieces together, she makes a chilling discovery: The killer is coming after her and her daughter....

The most autobiographical of John le Carré’s works, A Perfect Spy follows two narratives: the manhunt for the double agent Magnus Pym, and the makings of the man in question—told in his own words.

Five years ago, DCI John Lomond led the search for notorious Glasgow child-killer ‘The Sandman', until personal tragedy forced him off the case. In Lomond's absence, the killer was never found. Now, with nothing but work left in his life, Lomond remains obsessed with the case–despite the nightmares it brings. When a child is abducted in similar Sandman fashion from an affluent Glasgow suburb, Lomond is brought in to find them before it's too late.

Three critically acclaimed recordings are joined together in this dazzling Agatha Christie Triple Bill, read by award-winning narrators Alison Larkin and James Warwick, star of the Partners in Crime TV series on Masterpiece Theater.