Contains spoilers

Everything’s ambiguous in spyland. Take the title of Bad Actors, the eighth novel proper in Mick Herron’s Slough House / Slow Horses. In the credit page, Herron is at pains to point out that he is not referring to the people behind the TV adaptation. That makes sense, and when Apple TV get around to this one, the bad actors will be the characters from Russia, the British government and elsewhere, but these characters will no doubt be played by good actors. But there’s another dimension to all this. Herron often has his characters refer to their work as though it’s a game to be played, but in espionage and counter-espionage you’re playing a role. And if you are sent to Slough House, it’s because you were, well, bad at it. You can’t even cling to the idea that nothing is as it seems, as you can’t be sure what it is supposed to seem. But within all that, Bad Actors has a kind of uplifting message. To misquote Jagger, you can’t always be what you want, but you might be what you need.

That sounds convoluted, so let’s start at the beginning, with Herron’s customary introduction to the fug of depression that permeates Slough House. He refers to the ‘missed cues, mangled lines, early exits’ that have brought the horses to the secret service backwater of Aldersgate…even those who no longer think that their future will glitter ‘act as if they do’. Later, a returning character wonders what Diana Taverner makes of an investigation he’s conducting: ‘Diana thinks, or wants me to think she thinks, that I’m really looking into Waterproof and not de Greer. Which means she either wants me to do that, because she doesn’t want me looking into de Greer, or she doesn’t want me to do that and is only letting me think she things that’s what I’m doing in order to make me think she doesn’t care if it is. So she either wants me not to look into Waterproof, or wants me not to look into de Greer.’

A similar puzzle presents itself when Russia’s First Desk spends time in London unknown to the Park’s finest. Why does he give particular information to Taverner? Has he gone rogue? Is he designing his own exit ‘pursued by a bear’ as Lamb puts it? But, to continue the drama analogy, it is a question of props that opens up the whole case. Rasnokov ordered high-end whisky. What did he do with the bottles?

If you came straight to Bad Actors after Slough House, as we suggested you might, you’ll have noticed a real change in pace. For what I think is the first time, Herron starts the novel in the middle of the story. This makes sense given the ramifications from the previous book, and allows us to focus our attention elsewhere, although the themes of workplace ennui are sharpened by a new character working at the heart of government. Herron drops more clues than a wannabe slow horse as to the former senior aide we’re meant to have in mind. And our writer is so disgusted by the government of the time that he concocts a withering running joke about Brexit, and we get two characters based on the prime minister from the time – the actual prime minister character who is, thankfully, always off-stage, and Peter Judd, who returns as the pantomime villain. I think that we also see John Bachelor, breaker of many a career, appear in the main series for the first time.

For your entertainment: a showdown between Taverner and Lamb, perhaps some mental if not physical healing for Wicinski, a Zoom date for Roddy, a new spin on the game Yellow Car and an actual workplace mystery involving a home-made curry and a Dorset Naga chilli. And we see Diana and other Park favourites out in the field. After the bleakness of Slough House, Herron is on his best entertaining behaviour, breaking off from describing action scenes to make witty asides.

But Bad Actors also seeks to provide some element of redemption. Shirley, who has not been dealing well with the fate that has befallen many of her former compadres, comes to terms, a bit, with her need to be where the action is. And there are two, not exactly anti-heroes but perhaps unheroes, one of whom realises that ‘his star didn’t shine as brightly as it might. Though when you thought about it, that was true of everyone.’ The other finds that the ‘moments of heroism has has always quite genuinely thought beyond him proved to be his finest, well, not hour. But minutes. He spent some minutes being heroic.’ This much is true, before he starts a new course of self-delusion. 

For Herron, a happy ending would be a non-starter. The play’s the thing. But Bad Actors makes a nice counterpoint to what has gone before. The curtain falls at the end, but maybe there will be an encore.

Afterword: for British readers there really is an encore. Standing by the Wall, ‘a Slough House interlude’ is included with your copy of Bad Actors. 

Check out all Cafethinking reviews of Slough House novels, novellas and short stories, plus episode reactions to series 5 of Slow Horses.