This is What Happened

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What to expect

From CWA Gold Dagger winner Mick Herron comes a shocking, twisted novel of psychological suspense about one woman's attempt to be better than ordinary.

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.

(P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critics Review

  • An ingenious standalone psychological thriller from Mick Herron . . . a compelling and claustrophobic three-hander

    Guardian
  • A spine-crawlingly creepy portrait of cruelty and of loneliness . . . springing twist after brilliant twist as he practically dares his reader to try to put the book down . . . very impressive

    Observer
  • Patrick Hamilton seems the main influence in this story of broken lives epitomising a society coming apart, both in his studies of London’s losers and in his seminal depiction of gaslighting that foreshadows how Maggie is imprisoned and controlled

    Sunday Times
  • Herron delivers a chilling psychological thriller . . . An in-one-sitting read

    Sunday Times Crime Club
  • Imagine John Fowles’s The Collector rewritten by Ruth Rendell . . . you’d be nuts not to feast on this clever black comedy

    Evening Standard
  • Part spy thriller, part creepy psychological thriller, the slick twists and elegant prose make this a super read

    Sunday Mirror

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