The blurb:
In 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.
I read this one pretty fast—it's the summer break, so I had some time, so I dove into a truly enjoyable book.
I mentioned in the review of Slough House that Diana Taverner lives and breathes politics and power; that she swims in rather sharky, murky waters as far as politics goes does come back to bite her here, with Anthony Sparrow, advisor to the PM, making plays to gather more power for Number 10, and recognising that Taverner will be A Serious Problem on the road to that goal. Intending to get rid of her, he plants a story that a member of one of his own think-tanks has been 'disappeared' by MI5, which means Diana Taverner is in the frame.
The trouble is, things are not as simple as that summary makes it sound. In keeping with the theme of the past never being dead (which does crop up a bit: Frank Harkness, 'Peter Kahlmann', the cicadas in Dead Lions, Jackson Lamb himself is pretty much a walking pile of history and past grudges), it's left to John Bachelor, finally making the definitive leap from the side novellas to the main novels, to recognise someone from the past in the present.
The structure of this one is slightly unusual; we kick off with Act 2, go back to Act 1 and then conclude with Act 3, so you do have to pay attention to what's going on, and get past a moment of "...something happened in Wimbledon?" and "Why is Shirley in the drying-out place?" at the start of the novel. Roll with it.
Speaking of Shirley; I really enjoy her character. I don't like her exactly, but over several novels, she's really developing. Lord knows she has issues and virtually no self-awareness (a neat trick, given how well Herron uses her internal monologue to show us the state of her soul)... but she's growing. In fits and starts, with backward slips as much as forward steps, but she's very human. On the one hand, she's never going to quit her various addictions like cocaine, rage and monkey wrenches until she admits them; on the other, in a bull-headed sort of way she's as courageous as anyone, and considerably more than some. And she makes some little admissions here that show that, when summed up, this book is a step forward for her. She's facing—a little bit at least—her grief at what's happened around her and there's a truly touching scene between her and Catherine at the end of the book.
Claude Whelan, the former First Desk, makes a reappearance and appears to learn a little as well. His wife has left him, his life's a mess...but he gets a moment of heroism (rendered pretty realistically, I think; everyone thinks they'll be all cool-headed and keep their shit together if they're in a fight but unless you're trained for it...was it Tyson who said everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face? Whelan has a plan, gets punched in the face, sort of, but keeps going). And at the end of the novel, he does appear to be picking things up a bit. In a small way, but it's a start.
Someone who doesn't make a return is River Cartwright. At the end of Slough House, Sid heard him falling to the floor after the Russian kill team had fiddled with the doorknob earlier in the book, applying novichok to it, but we didn't see the body. In universe, it's never really been confirmed that he's dead either and, at the end of Bad Actors, Louisa Guy does tell new resident Ashley Khan to get her stuff off River's desk because he'll be back. So maybe he's not dead. Regardless, I didn't miss him. Not that I dislike the character but Herron has a large cast to choose from, and River's been mostly second-string for a while now, with Louisa largely taking the role of the most competent of the slow horses.
Jackson Lamb continues in his usual style, flatulent and offensive, fighting a minor office war against newcomer Ashley Khan (Roddy Ho is collateral damage); Ashley, who encountered Lamb in Slough House, is a new horse and very resentful of the fact that she's there at all, blaming Lamb for her banishment. He's also fighting a larger battle, on-side with Diana Taverner for the moment. It's not exactly that he wants to keep her in the job but doing that is the price of spiking Sparrow's plans.
A complex plot with lots of moving parts, a large-ish cast and a fractured timeline—but it all comes together if you're paying attention, and moves the story of the slow horses one step further along. Next one is Clown Town. The local library network has six copies and I'm the 22nd reservation so it'll be a little while, I think.
Started: 31 November 2025
Finished: 1 January 2026
Back home.
More books.