Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2018
272 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
From CWA Gold & Steel Dagger winner Mick Herron comes a shocking, twisted novel of thrilling suspense about one woman's attempt to be better than ordinary.
Twenty-six-year-old Maggie Barnes is someone you would never look at twice. Living alone in a month-to-month sublet in the huge city of London, with no family but an estranged sister, no boyfriend or partner, and not much in the way of friends, Maggie is just the kind of person who could vanish from the face of the earth without anyone taking notice. Or just the kind of person MI5 needs to infiltrate the establishment and thwart an international plot that puts all of Britain at risk.
Now one young woman has the chance to be a hero - if she can think quickly enough to stay alive.
"Starred Review. Beautifully written and ingeniously plotted ... This dark thriller is rife with the deadpan wit and trenchant observation that Herron's readers relish." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Profoundly disturbing ... Fans who miss the startling and compelling psychological suspense of Ruth Rendell will relish this unsettling tale." - Booklist
"Herron has some fantastical twists in mind that Agatha Christie never dreamed of." - Kirkus
"Terrific spy novel ... Sublime dialogue, frictionless plotting." - Ian Rankin, bestselling author of the Inspector Rebus books
This information about This Is What Happened was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mick Herron is a British novelist and short story writer who was born in Newcastle and studied English at Oxford. He is the author of the Slough House espionage series (soon to be an Apple TV+ show starring Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas), four Oxford mysteries, and several standalone novels. His work has won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, the Steel Dagger for Best Thriller, and the Ellery Queen Readers Award, and been nominated for the Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and Theakstons Novel of the Year Awards. He currently lives in Oxford and writes full-time.
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