Bad Actors by Mick Herron

 

An academic, a member of a government think-tank, has gone missing. In the race to discover her whereabouts first desk at MI5 is pitted against a special advisor to Number 10. The outcome could have long-reaching consequences for the future of MI5.

Knowing that book 9 in the Slough House/Slow Horses series is due out in September, I was determined to get up-to-date with the series before then. Bad Actors by Mick Herron is book 8 in the series. I found this book to focus more on political machinations, with control of MI5 being at the heart of the story.

Anthony Sparrow is a special advisor to the Prime Minister, to all intents and purposes, the real person controlling the government. Sparrow is a decidedly unpleasant individual, and it doesn't take much imagination to figure out the inspiration behind the character. He doesn't like the fact that MI5 operates independently of government and sets about plotting the downfall of Diana Taverner in a bid to discredit the Security Service and bring it under the control of No. 10. What Sparrow doesn't realise is that Taverner is a slippery customer, usually two steps ahead of everyone else.

The political infighting, double crossing and hints at possible Russian assets in the UK make this much more of a genuine spy thriller than the rest of the series. The team of slow horses doesn't feature quite as much as they have done in previous novels, but when they do, chaos ensues. Shirley Dander is the stand-out character this time around and is best described as a Tasmanian Devil; there are some truly comic scenes when she is involved. My favorite line of the whole book involves a stand-off between Shirley and a knife-wielding thug. She looks down at her hand, "Just like a slow horse, she thought. Bringing a spork to a knife fight".

Jackson Lamb is as disgusting, misogynistic and brilliant as ever; his level of sarcasm is top-notch. For fans who were left devastated at the end of Slough House, the ending of Bad Actors offers a tiny ray of hope.

Author Details

Mick Herron is the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Slough House thrillers, which have been published in over twenty-five languages and are the basis of the award-winning TV series Slow Horses, starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb. Among his other novels are the Zoë Boehm series, also now adapted for TV starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, and the standalone novels The Secret Hours and Nobody Walks. Mick’s awards include the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the CWA Gold, Steel and Diamond Daggers. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives in Oxford.