Books to Look Forward to from John Murray Press

June 2018

This is What Happened is by Mick Herron.  Something's happened.  A lot of things have happened.  If she could turn back time, she wondered how far she would go.  Twenty-six-year-old Maggie Barnes is someone you would never look at twice. Living alone in a month-to-month sublet in 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 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.

October 2018

At a restaurant in Sloane Square, a politician confides to journalist Jon Swift that he is concerned for his own safety; a few months later he is found dead in his flat. But when the police and even Swift's paper refuse to investigate the death further, he must take matters into his own hands.  Soon Swift finds himself hunting down the killers on a global scale and, between MI5 and Russian thugs, a suspicious death in London unravels into an international conspiracy that stretches all the way to the Kremlin.  On their trail, it's not long before Swift becomes a target himself . . .Moscow Midnight is by John Swift.

November 2018

Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund  sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone cafe, he knows he's witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly, he sets in train events which will alter lives. Bachelor himself, a hair's breadth away from sleeping in his car, is clawing his way back to stability; Hannah Weiss, the double agent whose recruitment was his only success, is starting to enjoy the secrets and lies her role demands; and Lech Wicinski, an Intelligence Service analyst, finds that a simple favour for an old acquaintance might derail his career. Meanwhile, Lady Di Taverner is trying to keep the Service on an even keel, and if that means throwing the odd crew member overboard, well: collateral damage is her speciality.  A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information.  It's also what happens just before you hit the ground.  The Drop is by Mick Herron