Mick Herron, creator of the anti-fascist series 'Slow Horses', wins the Pepe Carvalho award

BarcelonaBritish novelist Mick Herron (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 1963) is the winner of the 21st Pepe Carvalho Prize. Herron is the creator of the acclaimed series Slow horses, adapted for television as Slow horses, which narrates the adventures and misadventures of a group of losers who are part of a run-down department where agents expelled from MI5 headquarters for one reason or another end up. These spies are the antithesis of James Bond, but they are capable of saving the agency bosses' skins when things get tough. The novels are dripping with irony but are not pure entertainment: they paint a great portrait of British society, including its darker sides, and have a clear anti-fascist message.

The jury for the award – made up of Daniel Vázquez Sallés, Dani Nel·lo, Álex Martín, Olga Merino, Marta Marne, and Carlos Zanón – emphasized that the prize recognizes the author's literary career and his essential contribution to the renewal of the crime novel. thriller and contemporary espionage. According to the jury, Herron has built over his years as a professional "a lucid, solid, and coherent body of work, marked by narrative precision, complex literary architecture, and a corrosive, ironic humor, which dissects current power structures and the miseries of the espionage world." A perspective that moves away from the classic glamour of the genre to offer "a more disenchanted, critical, and profoundly human approach," fully aligned with the spirit of the 2026 Pepe Carvalho Prize.

The author has also developed other acclaimed narrative universes, such as the four-book series Zoë Boehm, prior to Slow horsesIn this series, starring a shrewd and unconventional Oxford private detective, Herron explores the darker sides of British society with a heavy dose of sarcasm. Zoë Boehm It has also had a television adaptation: Down Cemetery Roadstarring Emma Thompson. The British writer has been recognized with some of the most prestigious awards in the genre, such as the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger (2013) for the novel Dead lionesses and the Diamond Dagger (2025) for lifetime achievement.