Slow Horses

**Waterstones Thriller of the Month for August 2017

**Shortlisted for the 2010 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award

The first novel in the acclaimed Jackson Lamb series, described by The Telegraph as one of ‘the twenty greatest spy novels of all time’.

“Let us be clear about this much at least: Slough House is not in Slough, nor is it a house…”

You don't stop being a spook just because you're no longer in the game.

Welcome to Slough House, Regent’s Park, a graveyard for members of the intelligence service no longer in the game – the slow horses. A motley crew of criminals, abusers and troubled souls, banished for various crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal – they all belong to Jackson Lamb.

Jackson Lamb's misfits may be highly trained but they don't run ops, they push paper. When a boy is kidnapped and held hostage and his attackers promise to behead him, live on the net, a chance opens up for the slow horses to redeem themselves and whatever the instructions of the Service, the slow horses aren't going to just sit quiet and watch.

Yet, as they begin to investigate, a more complex web of deceit and double agency begins to opens up. Is the victim who they claim to be? What is the connection with a disgraced journalist? Who else has something to hide?

As the clock ticks, everyone, it seems, is in the game, with dangerous pieces at play.