Praise for Mick Herron:

"[An] assured mystery. . . . Herron does a nice job of planting red herrings and making his heroine’s amateur sleuthing plausible."—Publishers Weekly

"In Smoke and Whispers, Herron has spun an intricate, suspenseful web. . . . Meticulously weaves seemingly disparate strands into a stunning finale. . . . A nicely crafted, suspenseful plot, an empathetic heroine and victim, and some really scary people. A very good read."—Deadly Pleasures


"[A] superb investigative thriller."—Midwest Book Review

"Electrifying."—Mystery Books News

"Atmospheric, full of surprises, with some pools of seductive prose."—ForeWord Magazine

When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as private detective Zöe Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions.

Did Zöe kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her? Why was she wearing a jacket a murderer had stolen years before? And what’s brought Sarah’s sparring partner, Gerard Inchon, to the same broken-down hotel? Coincidence is an excuse that soon looks pretty unconvincing. Sarah can’t leave until she’s found the answers to her questions, however dangerous that might turn out to be.

Mick Herron is the author of five successful titles. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne and a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, he has a degree in English. A resident of Oxford, Mick works in London on future novels and writes book reviews.