Dolphin Junction: Stories

Book excerpt: CWA Gold and Steel Dagger-winner Mick Herron's short fiction, collected for the first time. Mick Herron, author of the Slough House novels, is on his way to becoming one of the most critically acclaimed and culturally important crime fiction writers of the twenty-first century. He has been awarded both the Gold and Steel Daggers by the Crime Writers’ Association and has been called “the John Le Carré of the future” (BBC). But Mick Herron does more than “just” write flawlessly suspenseful spy thrillers. He is a craftist of the highest order, irrepressibly versatile in form (novels, novellas, short fiction) and mood (witty, taut, spooky, laugh-out-loud funny), whose “efficient, darkly witty, tipped-with-imagery sentences . . . feel purpose-built to perforate [our] private daze of illiteracy” (The Atlantic). 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 standalone nerve-rackingly 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.