Bad Actors - Mick Herron

 How hard a choice was this?  One of my favourite writers offering a take on my favourite subject.  OK, it was slightly disappointing when I realised it wasn't about substandard thespians.  The plus side is that it's Jackson Lamb and the Slow Horses at their very best.

Mick Herron gets better with every book.  The development here is structural.  We start with Act Two and then go back to Act One.  In terms of plotting and the unravelling thereof, it's very, very clever.  We also have the bonus of Shirley Dander on the rampage.  The Seige of the San by the Ultras is one of the best, perhaps the actual best, set pieces of the entire Slough House series.

We're what now?  Nine or ten novels in, plus extras like The Drop, the central character of which, John Bachelor, continues here.   The frame for Bad Actors is the really bad actors of the recent Tory government.  It is pretty obvious who the Machiavellian Andrew Sparrow is based on and there are absolutely no prizes for identifying the lying narcsicist he props up.   Sparrow has hired himself a super-forecaster (remember those?), a Swiss citizen called Dr Sophie de Greer.  John Bachelor sees her on TV and recalls a moment from his undistinguished past.  He recognises her mother in Dr Greer and the mother was not in any sense Swiss.  Bachelor tells Slow Horse Lech Wicinski.  You tell any Slow Horse anything and it will inevitably get to Jackson Lamb.   Meanwhile the power-crazed Sparrow is plotting to add Spook Street to his portfolio, which means unseating First Desk Diana Taverner, which in turn threatens the future of Slough House and Jackson Lamb's joes, which is never going to end well.

Bad Actors is a real treat, a perfect marriage of political lunacy and the essential madness of a professional espionage service.  Joyful in every way.

The Drop and The List - Mick Herron

 This is fun - two novellas associated with the Slow Horses of Slough House and Spook Street.  John Bachelor is not a Slow Horse - he's not that important.  He was always a low grade employee of the Secret Service and now he's a part-timer, working off-site, for peanuts.  Bachelor's role is called the milk round.  He looks after retired assets, former moles and agents now long retired, on Civil Service pensions, in safe, out-of-the-way accommodation.

Inevitably, old spooks die.  And Bachelor finds Dieter Hess dead in his chair, with a book on his lap and music on the CD player.  Not a bad way to go, and by no means unexpected.  Bachelor arranges the wake.  To his total horror, Diana Taverner, second desk at the Park, shows up, wanting a word.  Did Hess mention a second source of income?  How come Bachelor didn't know about the coded list under the carpet?

Bachelor needs to fix this - fast.  It doesn't take him long to figure out the code.  It's a list of people with German names.  Was Dieter a double?  Jackson Lamb soon identifies that problem.  But one of the names is more interesting than others.  A young woman, Hannah Weiss, living in England.  

That's The List.  The Drop opens with another of Bachelor's charges, Solomon Dortmund, witnessing an Old School 'drop' take place right in front of him in his favourite cafe.  He reports this to Bachelor, who shies away from reporting it to Lady Di.  Frankly, he'd rather she'd forgotten his existence, especially in his somewhat reduced circumstances.  But Solomon managed to get the name of the man making the drop out of a waiter and Bachelor asks a casual acquaintance of his at the Park to run the name.  All manner of chaos ensues as the snow starts to blanket London.

Herron really is on top of his form.  The clever thing here is the linkage of the two novellas.  Neither is sufficient for a novel, together they very nearly are.  And the linkage allows us the time to know more about the characters.  I hope we meet some of them again.

Slough House - Mick Herron

 

Slough House has been deleted from the Regent Park mainframe.  The Slow Horses are being tailed.  Ex-Slow Horses are being tracked down and killed.  Jackson Lamb, for all his innumerable faults, is not going to tolerate things happening to his joes - which is bad news for those who commit such affronts.

Diana Taverner, first desk at the Park, has meanwhile dabbled with privatisation.  Not for personal gain, of course, but because the GRU have been sending over idiots to spread toxic chemicals around English cities.  This turns out to be a mistake on many levels, not least of which is that, in her hour of need, she has to turn to Jackson Lamb.

Also back in the frame is Sid (Sidonie) Baker, who once took a bullet for River Cartwright, is back from the dead, hiding out at the country house River just inherited from the Old Bastard.  She thinks she is being pursued by Mormon missionaries.  The Yellow Vests are venting on the streets of London and Jackson Lamb meets a gay American of restricted growth who believes his boyfriend has been murdered on the orders of Vladimir Putin.

Mick Herron's alternative take on the Secret Service is back for a seventh anarchic romp - the best to date in my opinion.  The critical take on contemporary Britain is absolutely on the nose and there were many laugh out loud moments.  Herron is also excellent on the suspense, where needed, and the car chase through benighted rural Kent was beautifully done.  A masterpiece of its kind.