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Discover the opening chapters of this year’s shortlisted titles for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.
These exclusive extracts offer the perfect introduction to the books competing for the prize, giving you a flavour of the gripping plots, unforgettable characters and thrilling suspense before casting your vote.
About the Book
MI5’s First Desk, Diana Taverner, doesn’t appreciate threats.
So when those involved in a covert operation during the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland threaten to expose the ugly side of state security, Taverner goes on the offensive. And when that happens, people get hurt. Over at Slough House, the repository for failed spies, the slow horses are hard at work: belittling each other, pushing paper, and marking time. Their boss, Jackson Lamb, wants them at their desks, but the slow horses are always looking for a way back on to Spook Street. Meanwhile, another slow horse, River Cartwright, is waiting to be passed fit for work.
At a loose end, 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. What stories will it hold? And who wants those stories to stay silent?
After all, spies lie, they betray, it’s what they do.
Read the first chapter: Clown Town Chapter 1
About the author
Mick Herron is the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Slough House thrillers, which have been published in over twenty-five languages and are the basis of the award-winning TV series Slow Horses, starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb.
Among his other novels are the Zoë Boehm series, also now adapted for TV starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, and the standalone novels The Secret Hours and Nobody Walks.
Mick’s awards include the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the CWA Gold, Steel and Diamond Daggers. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives in Oxford.
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About the Awards
The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award celebrates excellence, originality, and the very best in crime fiction by UK and Irish authors. A highlight of the literary calendar, it is recognised as one of the most prestigious accolades in the genre.
Each year, a longlist of 18 titles is carefully selected by a panel of industry experts. The public is then invited to take part in two key stages of the voting process: first, to help determine the shortlist of six novels from the longlist, and later, to help choose the overall winner from the shortlist. In both stages, the public vote is combined with the judging panel’s decision to reach the final outcome. The winner will be announced at the Opening Ceremony of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, which will next take place on Thursday 23 July 2026.
The winner will receive a £3,000 cash prize and a hand-engraved oak beer cask, crafted by one of Britain’s last remaining coopers at Theakston’s Brewery in Masham, North Yorkshire. Past winners include Mark Billingham, Denise Mina, Lee Child, Val McDermid, M.W. Craven, Jo Callaghan and 2025’s winner, Abir Mukherjee.