Jack Lowden at a cemetery in 'Slow Horses' Season 6. Image via Apple TV By Anja Djuricic Published Sep 16, 2026, 11:01 PM EDT Anja Djuricic was born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1992. Her first interest in film started very early, as she learned to speak English by watching Disney animated movies (and many, many reruns). Anja soon became inspired to learn more foreign languages to understand more movies, so she entered the Japanese language and literature Bachelor Studies at the University of Belgrade. Anja is also one of the founders of the DJ duo Vazda Garant, specializing in underground electronic music influenced by various electronic genres. Anja loves to do puzzles in her spare time, pet cats wherever she meets them, and play The Sims. Anja's Letterboxd four includes Memories of Murder, Parasite, Nope, and The Road to El Dorado. Sign in to your Collider account Add Us Add on Google Preferred Source Google News Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap If you're a fan of Apple TV 's critically acclaimed series Slow Horses , you probably already know that the show is based on the Slough House novel series. Their author, Mick Herron , has been writing spy fiction since 2010, and what began as a cult favorite has grown into one of the most acclaimed thriller series of the 21st century, earning comparisons to John le Carré while doing something entirely unique: satirizing British intelligence with wit so dry it could sand furniture. The BBC described him as "the le Carré of the future." The New Yorker described the series as " the best in a generation , by some estimates, and unquestionably the funniest."
As a reminder, Slough House is MI5's dumping ground for disgraced agents ; they made mistakes that should normally cost them their careers but ended up in Slough House. Led by the monumentally disorderly Jackson Lamb, these agents, known internally as slow horses, shuffle paper and wait out their professional deaths, except, of course, they keep stumbling into genuine danger. The fine line between institutional irrelevance and real responsibilities is what makes both the adaptation and the books so compelling. The Slough House series now runs to nine novels, and not every entry is equally essential. Whether you're a Herron connoisseur or picking up his books for the first time , here are the essential Mick Herron books you must read at least once.
A woman caught in the rain in a greenish blue neon street on the cover of Down Cemetery Road Image via Hachette UK Before Jackson Lamb and Slough House , there was a quiet Oxford street and a gas explosion that turned out to be foul play. Mick Herron's debut novel , Down Cemetery Road , introduces Sarah Tucker, a bored housewife whose comfortable life is upended when a house on her street is blown up, two adults killed, and a four-year-old girl left unaccounted for . What begins as a neighbor's concern escalates quickly into something far more dangerous, leading Sarah to hire private investigator Zoë Boehm and stumble into the long shadow of a government agency.
Down Cemetery Road is a more conventional thriller than anything Herron would later write; the cynical wit is present but less fully developed, and the plotting occasionally sprawls, but the essential Herron ingredients are already locked in : ordinary people facing off against…