Mick Herron was born in Newcastle and has a degree in English from Balliol College, Oxford. He is the author of ten other novels, Slow Horses, Dead Lions, Nobody Walks, Real Tigers, Spook Street, Down Cemetery Road, The Last Voice You Hear, Why We Die, Smoke and Whispers, and Reconstruction, as well as the novella The List. 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.