I’m managing to keep up with my 20 books – just finishing reading 12 & 13 at the moment, and nos 13 & 14 will be a double bill of Maigrets in new editions which I’ll be reviewing for Shiny New Books and tying into Emma’s Paris in July tag. Having read many Maigrets as a teen, I’m working my way through them again in the newish Penguin editions/translations, and I thought I’d (re-)read loads – but I’ve only managed 17 Maigrets and 3 romans durs over the past few years. However, with 75 Maigrets and countless others in total, it’s fair to say that there’s one for any challenge. Ha ha! But back to my next review in my 20 books.
Bad Actors by Mick Herron (Slough House #8)
As I mentioned before when I read the seventh book in Herron’s wonderful series featuring the disgraced spooks of the security service’s Slough House offshoot, I had been rationing myself to one per year. But then Herron, who has never been shy to get one of his characters killed, pulled a fast one at the end of the seventh book, Slough House, and left us on a cliff-hanger with regard to a key character… we didn’t know if they had died or survived the predicament he’d put them in.
I couldn’t let that fester. So I’ve broken my plans and read no 8 in the series – and blow me if I didn’t have to wait until 3 pages before the end to have that death or not confirmed! And I’m not letting on who was involved here either.
We begin with a scene-setting prologue in which we meet one Anthony Sparrow – who is in the woods, playing wargames with a group of football hooligan types, when he gets a call – from the PM!
Cut to Herron’s usual opening describing the approach to the inconspicuous entrance to Slough House and Louisa Guy is on her way, imagining punching Roddy Ho in the face as she goes. We meet the latest recruit to the team of misfits – young Ashley Khan, who had been practising her tradecraft in surveillance trailing a Slough House resident – but she was trailing Jackson Lamb who caught her and broke her arm – thus ending up with her too. He doesn’t know what to do with her. We’ll discover she has hidden depths, and a brilliant way to make sure no-one will eat her lunch in the fridge in future…
The plot concerns a missing futurologist, a key member of a Downing Street think tank. The PM’s aide, Anthony Sparrow, wants to find her. and recruits Claude Whelan, retired first desk of MI5 to privately track her down. He doesn’t want Diana Taverner who is now finally first desk to know what’s going on, as thanks to her immediate predecessor’s manipulation he can implicate her in some not-strictly legal operations, and thus rid the service of a long-standing troublesome woman. After all he has the ear of the PM – practically controls him. (I know, you’re thinking Dominic Cummings here, he may have inspired that side of the character, but Sparrow is nastier than that.) As for Taverner, it turns out that her Russian counterpart is in London and they didn’t know until he made himself known at their embassy. Meanwhile Whelan manages to get the Slough House team involved when he mistakenly tangles with the pocket rocket aka Shirley. I shall say no more, just leave you with an absolute classic Jackson Lambism – he’s talking to Sophie…
He opened the fridge, eyeing de Greer speculatively. ‘You look to me like a MILF.’
‘… I beg your pardon?’
‘Milk in first?’ He removed a carton. ‘Or have I got that wrong?’
The politics in this one was particularly top notch – on all sides, and from the very beginning we’re hoping for the downfall of Anthony Sparrow, for the Russian’s plans to be foiled, and for Diana to keep her job, as well as the right resolution of that cliff-hanger. Herron can do no wrong. My paperback edition came with the added bonus of a the Christmas short story Standing by the Wall: A Slough House interlude – which is full of Roddy Ho-Ho-Ho! (Also available as a pocket-sized short, and in the anthology Standing by the Wall.)
I can’t wait for the new one, Clown Town coming in September!
Source: Own copy. John Murray, 2022, paperback, 379 pages (incl the short). BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link.
