Mick Herron is the winner of the 2025 Raymond Chandler Award

The photo of Mick Herron is by Mikael Buck

Mick Herron, whose latest novel, London Rules, just out in Italy as Le regole di Londra, published by Feltrinelli, like all the installments of the series featuring MI5 agent Jackson Lamb, is one of the most popular and acclaimed spy writers today, but he also owes his success to the TV series Slow Horses and Down Cemetery Road, starring actors of the caliber of Gary Oldman and Emma Thompson, based on his books and for which he serves as screenwriter and showrunner. “The style that Chandler pioneered,” Mick Herron writes, “spread rapidly to make itself felt well beyond the confines of the detective novel, reaching all corners of the thriller-writing world, including those where spies gather. […] My own novels show, I hope, a little of Chandler’s love for language.”

Mick Herron will be handed the Chandler Award on December 4th at the Casa del Manzoni, the venue that Noir in Festival has chosen for its leading events. There, the Chandler winner will hold a talk with author and film noir expert Adrian Wootton before Noir audiences, while on the morning of the same day, Herron will meet with students and teachers at IULM University (Noir’s historic partner) and explain how Slow Horses became a global hit and went from a book to a TV series.

The 35th edition of Noir in Festival will run from December 1^st to 6^th in Milan and treat fans once more to the full clout of its multidisciplinary nature, packing in films, books, comics, new media, and its international film competition lineup, along with talks with authors, masterclasses at IULM, a focus on podcasts and comics, the Giorgio Scerbanenco Award for best Italian novel and the Claudio Caligari Prize for best Italian film, both reserved for works in the genre for the year 2024-2025.

Mick Herron (Newcastle, 1963) made his literary debut in 2003 with the novel Down Cemetery Road (turned into the 2025 TV series of the same name), and has gone on to publish over fifteen novels, including two series starring the same character. He also writes stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. His books have won numerous awards, among them the Gold Dagger in 2013, per Dead Lions, and the 2025 Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement, both bestowed on him by the Crime Writers’ Association. Agent Jackson Lamb made his appearance in Slow Horses in 2010, acclaimed as one of the top twenty spy stories of all time. The TV series made for Apple TV+ inspired by the character is one of the most viewed series ever.