Bad Actors (Slough House) - Espionage Thriller Novel by Mick Herron - Perfect for Spy Fiction Fans & Book Club Discussions
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Product Description
THE EIGHTH BOOK IN THE SERIES BEHIND SLOW HORSES, AN APPLE ORIGINAL SERIES NOW STREAMING ON APPLE TV+ Mick Herron, “the le Carré of the future” (BBC), expands his world of bad spies with an even shadier cast of characters: the politicians, lobbyists, and misinformation agents pulling the levers of government policy. “Confirms Mick Herron as the best spy novelist now working.”—NPR's Fresh AirIn London's MI5 headquarters a scandal is brewing that could disgrace the entire intelligence community. The Downing Street superforecaster—a specialist who advises the Prime Minister's office on how policy is likely to be received by the electorate—has disappeared without a trace. Claude Whelan, who was once head of MI5, has been tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads him straight back to Regent's Park itself, with First Desk Diana Taverner as chief suspect. Has Taverner overplayed her hand at last? Meanwhile, her Russian counterpart, Moscow intelligence's First Desk, has cheekily showed up in London and shaken off his escort. Are the two unfortunate events connected?Over at Slough House, where Jackson Lamb presides over some of MI5's most embittered demoted agents, the slow horses are doing what they do best, and adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation . . . There are bad actors everywhere, and they usually get their comeuppance before the credits roll. But politics is a dirty business, and in a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing are the norm, sometimes the good guys can find themselves outgunned.
Customer Reviews
What a delight! I can’t recommend this book enough. Great characters. Great plot. Gut busting humor. Farcical action. Great writing. The plot unfolds early and by midpoint, Bad Actors is impossible to put down.The book begins by satirically paraphrasing the last verse of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” To wit:“The woods were lovely, dark, and deep, and full of noisy bast’rds,” which is fitting because Frost himself was an icy, sardonic man. And this book is a satirical portrait of spies and politicians.The narration is clever in shading scenes from a character’s perspective, without actually quoting the character’s thoughts verbatim. Take this description of doing yoga that features the drug-addled Shirley Dander:“Then several minutes of downward dog, the least dignified position Shirley had attempted without at least one other person being involved.”And this description of Shirley feeling satisfied:“There’s nothing like putting someone through a window for altering the dynamic of a situation.”Cold and calculating characters invoke stark descriptions of the world around them. Weak and insecure characters perceive a threatening world preying on their failings. The one exception is Jackson Lamb, a repugnant modern day Sherlock Holmes. The narrator rarely reveals Lamb’s thought processes. Instead, the reader gets descriptions of Lamb’s behavior and aptitude. He chain smokes cigarettes. He’s foul. He’s cruel. He’s hilarious. He’s at his best in critical situations. He’s a genius, thoroughly over qualified for his role as the deplorable task master for his slow horses in Slough House (Gary Oldman portrays him in the TV series with superb, scatalogical accuracy).The action is farcical because, though it is frequently violent, it’s also funny, the perfect example of an author guiding his readers through brutal chaos with wit and charm.The only nit I have is that, in the first hundred pages or so, Bad Actors jumps back and forth in time, taking the reader from the present to the past and back to the present, sometimes within a single paragraph. But that’s a minor detail that is easily understood as the plot unfolds.Bad Actors is an expertly written spy novel promising and delivering great entertainment.
