Clown Town
On sale
11th September 2025
Price: £29.99
Genre
The brand new Slough House thriller from the #1 bestseller Mick Herron
*Now an award-winning Apple TV+ series starring Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Jack Lowden*
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‘Mick Herron is our best and most topical spy writer’ Ian Rankin
‘Britain’s finest living thriller writer’ Sunday Express
‘The man is a genius’ The Spectator
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Spies lie. They betray. It’s what they do.
Slow horse River Cartwright is waiting to be passed fit for work. With time to kill, and with his grandfather – a legendary former spy – long dead, River investigates the secrets of the old man’s library, and a mysteriously missing book.
Regent’s Park’s First Desk, Diana Taverner, doesn’t appreciate threats. So when those involved in a covert operation during the height of the Troubles threaten to expose the ugly side of state security, Taverner turns blackmail into opportunity.
Over at Slough House, the repository for failed spies, Catherine Standish just wants everyone to play nice. But as far as Jackson Lamb is concerned, the slow horses should all be at their desks.
Because when Taverner starts plotting mischief people get hurt, and Lamb has no plans to send in the clowns. On the other hand, if the clowns ignore his instructions and fool around, any harm that befalls them is hardly his fault.
But they’re his clowns. And if they don’t all come home, there’ll be a reckoning.
Available to pre-order now!
2025 Mick Herron (P)2025 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
*Now an award-winning Apple TV+ series starring Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Jack Lowden*
—-
‘Mick Herron is our best and most topical spy writer’ Ian Rankin
‘Britain’s finest living thriller writer’ Sunday Express
‘The man is a genius’ The Spectator
—-
Spies lie. They betray. It’s what they do.
Slow horse River Cartwright is waiting to be passed fit for work. With time to kill, and with his grandfather – a legendary former spy – long dead, River investigates the secrets of the old man’s library, and a mysteriously missing book.
Regent’s Park’s First Desk, Diana Taverner, doesn’t appreciate threats. So when those involved in a covert operation during the height of the Troubles threaten to expose the ugly side of state security, Taverner turns blackmail into opportunity.
Over at Slough House, the repository for failed spies, Catherine Standish just wants everyone to play nice. But as far as Jackson Lamb is concerned, the slow horses should all be at their desks.
Because when Taverner starts plotting mischief people get hurt, and Lamb has no plans to send in the clowns. On the other hand, if the clowns ignore his instructions and fool around, any harm that befalls them is hardly his fault.
But they’re his clowns. And if they don’t all come home, there’ll be a reckoning.
Available to pre-order now!
2025 Mick Herron (P)2025 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
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Reviews
Praise for Mick Herron --
The finest writer of espionage fiction we have . . . Herron is simply incapable of writing a bad book
Mick Herron is our best and most topical spy writer
Britain's finest living thriller writer
The man is a genius
The foremost living spy novelist in the English language
Herron is at the summit of a new golden age of spy fiction
A master of espionage fiction
Mick Herron is one of the beadiest satirists of our times
Clown Town is an absolute belter. No one is better than Mick at loading exactly the right words and taking aim at the egos and idiocies in Westminster and further afield. More satisfying than a squirty flower in the face of your least favourite politician
Mick Herron has that rare gift of being able to write exquisitely and hilariously while keeping us on the edge of our seats. An IRA double agent and a corrupt politician are central to this story while Diana Taverner and Jackson Lamb slug it out once again. Thoroughly enjoyable, I now have a whole new bunch of insults to add to my collection
The circus is back in town and this time the slow horses are not the only clowns in the big tent . . . effectively blends plot, satire and pure, unadulterated fun. Another Mick Herron virtuoso performance
Pure class: thrilling, funny and moving. By now it's obvious that the Slough House novels are not just suspenseful, laugh-out-loud entertainments, not just literary marvels, but important too, essential stories of the state of the UK in the twenty first century
