SleuthSayers: Stay Out of my Head

SleuthSayers: Stay Out of my Head: photo by Peter Rozovsky  You have probably encountered Anthony Horowitz in one format or another.  He is a master of television, creating Fo...

The Rap Sheet: Herron’s Genre Contributions Recognized

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Mystery File: Stories I’m Reading: MICK HERRON “Kicking Off”

 Mystery File: Stories I’m Reading: MICK HERRON “Kicking Off”

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: More Stories from Mick Herron

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: More Stories from Mick Herron:   Dolphin Junction by Mick Herron was published in 2021 and features 11 short stories previously published between 2006 and 2019. The  book...

George Kelly: WEDNESDAY’S SHORT STORIES #122: DOLPHIN JUNCTION: STORIES By Mick Herron

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Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: Stories by Mick Herron, Part 1

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: Stories by Mick Herron, Part 1: In the last few days I read six short stories from Dolphin Junction by Mick Herron. The book was published in 2021 and features 11 stories ...

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Spy Fiction Authors

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Spy Fiction Authors:   Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl . This week's topic is a Genre Freebie (pick any genre and build a l...

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: This Is What Happened by Mick Herron

Mick Herron is a talented author of crime fiction that is routinely shortlisted for major awards. His books about a group of failed MI-5 agents are utterly brilliant in concept and execution. This Is What Happened (Soho Crime, 2018) is a stand-alone spy novel with several surprises along the way.

Maggie Barnes is 26 years old, living alone in London in a sublet room and working a mediocre job in a large corporate mail room. Both parents are gone, her only sibling is a sister to whom she hasn’t spoken for years. Few friends and not many interests, she could disappear and no one would notice. She often treats herself at a coffee shop on the way home from work, where she’s approached one day by a stranger who engages her in conversation. Too lonely to question this man’s attention and motives, she comes to rely on meeting him. Eventually this stranger explains he’s from MI-5 and that the company she works for is under surveillance for its foreign connections. He needs someone to install a program on their computer network so MI-5 can monitor the company’s activities.

Naïve Maggie does not question anything this complete stranger tells her. He coaches her for weeks on how to install the program, which computer to use, how to escape detection by the security guards, etc. On the night she is to install the system, she hides in a ladies’ room until midnight, when she sneaks up several flights of stairs to the executive offices and successfully inserts the flash drive she’s been given in a senior manager’s computer and turns the computer on. En route downstairs, however, she runs into one of the security guards who knows she shouldn’t be in the building at that hour.

From that point on, the story takes so many twists and turns, the reader might reasonably feel the onset of whiplash. Unexpectedly dark, loaded with suspense, it’s easy to quickly become invested in Maggie and her well-being, which is seriously in doubt at several points in the story.

Publishers Weekly and Booklist starred reviews.

·         Hardcover: 272 pages

·         Publisher: Soho Crime (January 30, 2018)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1616958618

·         ISBN-13: 978-1616958619

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Dead Lions: Mick Herron

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