His literary interests shifted after July 7, 2005, when being in London for the suicide bombings made him want to write about the security services. The problem was that he knew precisely nothing about the security services. What he did know was that the bigger an organization gets, the more dysfunctional it becomes.

“This was a truth that surely applied as much to the intelligence services as to any other place of work,” Herron later wrote. “And if every organization has its failures—its second-raters—wouldn’t that be well inside my comfort zone?”

. . .

“The main lesson I’ve taken away from this is that if you’re only going to be successful in one half of your career, make it the second half,” Herron said. “If it’s the first half, that’s a tragedy. But the second half is a happy ending.”