Born To Slow Horses

New work by the co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement.

Who can you trust when nothing's as it seems?

The CWA Gold Dagger Award-winning British espionage novel about disgraced MI5 agents who inadvertently uncover a deadly Cold War-era legacy of sleeper cells and mythic super spies. The disgruntled agents of Slough House, the MI5 branch where washed-up spies are sent to finish their failed careers on desk duty, are called into action to protect a visiting Russian oligarch whom MI5 hopes to recruit to British intelligence. While two agents are dispatched on that babysitting job, though, an old Cold War-era spy named Dickie Bow is found dead, ostensibly of a heart attack, on a bus outside of Oxford, far from his usual haunts. But the head of Slough House, the irascible Jackson Lamb, is convinced Dickie Bow was murdered. As the agents dig into their fallen comrade's circumstances, they uncover a shadowy tangle of ancient Cold War secrets that seem to lead back to a man named Alexander Popov, who is either a Soviet bogeyman or the most dangerous man in the world. How many more people will have to die to keep those secrets buried?

The startling new work by internationally celebrated Caribbean poet, historian and cultural theorist Kamau Brathwaite, winner of the 2006 Griffin Poetry Prize.

If Spook Street is where spies live, Joe Country is where they go to die. In Slough House, the London outpost for disgraced MI5 spies, memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him an outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process. Meanwhile, in Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she’s going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil . . . And with winter taking its grip, Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can’t ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible for killing a slow horse breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score.

*Discover The Secret Hours, the gripping new thriller from Mick Herron and an unmissable read for Slough House fans* *Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman* *THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* **THE TIMES THRILLER BOOK OF THE YEAR** 'A gripping thriller' Ian Rankin Slough House - the crumbling office building to which failed spies, the 'slow horses', are banished - has been wiped from secret service records. Reeling from recent losses in their ranks, the slow horses are worried they've been pushed further into the cold, and fatal accidents keep happening. With a new populist movement taking a grip on London's streets, the aftermath of a blunder by the Russian secret service that left a British citizen dead, and the old order ensuring that everything's for sale to the highest bidder, the world's an uncomfortable place for those deemed surplus to requirements. The wise move would be to find a safe place and wait for the troubles to pass. But the slow horses aren't famed for making wise decisions. 'The most completely realised espionage universe since that peopled by George Smiley' The Times 'An absolute tour-de-force' Sunday Express

What happens when an old spook loses his mind? Does the Service have a retirement home for those who know too many secrets but don’t remember they’re secret? Or does someone take care of the senile spy for good? These are the paranoid concerns of David Cartwright, a Cold War–era operative and one-time head of MI5 who is sliding into dementia, and questions his grandson, River, must figure out answers to now that the spy who raised him has started to forget to wear pants. But River, himself an agent at Slough House, MI5’s outpost for disgraced spies, has other things to worry about. A bomb has detonated in the middle of a busy shopping center and killed forty innocent civilians. The “slow horses” of Slough House must figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates.

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured in June of each year with the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's richest and most prestigious literary prizes. The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology 2006: A Selection of the Shortlist includes poems from the seven exceptional books shortlisted for the 2006 prize. Royalties generated from the Griffin Poetry Prize anthologies are donated to UNESCO's World Poetry Day.