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.
