Slow Horses

Shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award

The finest new crime series this Millennium - Mail on Sunday

Slow Horses is set in Slough House, a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who've messed up: perhaps left a service file on a train, blown a surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They are the service's poor relations - the slow horses - and the most bitter among them is River Cartwright, whose days are spent transcribing mobile phone conversations.

But when a young man is abducted, and his kidnappers threaten to behead him live on the internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself. However, is the victim truly who he appears to be? And what is the connection between the kidnappers and a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River discovers that everyone involved has their own agenda...