A key member of a Downing Street think-tank has disappeared without a trace.

Claude Whelan, one-time First Desk of MI5's Regent's Park, is tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads straight back to Regent's Park HQ itself, with its chief, Diana Taverner, as prime suspect. Meanwhile her Russian counterpart has unexpectedly shown up in London but has slipped under MI5's radar.

Over at Slough House, the home for demoted and embittered spies, the slow horses are doing what they do best: adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation.

In a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing is the norm, bad actors are bending the rules for their own gain. If the slow horses want to change the script, they'll need to get their own act together before the final curtain.

*Includes the short story Standing by the Wall: A Slough House Interlude*

Review

Bad Actors took a big step into literary excellence. The dazzling, Conrad-like structure turned an entertainment into a major literary statement -- Philip Hensher ― The Spectator

Bad Actors is both thriller and anti-thriller: subverting and denying the treats you expect from the genre, but then providing them in a twisted form after all ― Sunday Times

There's no doubting Herron's intelligence. Will he prove to be our age's Anthony Trollope? . . . Few other contemporary thrillers, at any event, would have the confidence to make a plot point of the post-Brexit residency status of some of Lazio's hardcore Curva Nord football fans . . . [Bad Actors] deserves the bouquets that will come its way, and Herron is building a series with lasting resonance.We'll miss the show when some day he decides to bring the curtain down ― The Times

A pitch-perfect espionage thriller and a double delight for political nerds as it thrusts the slow horses into a Russian intelligence operation in Westminster . . . What Bad Actors shows is that he has inherited le Carré's mantle for using the thriller to dissect the times in which he lives . . . Bad Actors is his most piquant political satire, dripping with tart observations about our unruly rulers -- Tim Shipman ― Sunday Times Culture

Anyone who enjoys Mick Herron's masterful political satires and fantastical spy fiction must be afraid that one day his powers of invention will falter. It hasn't happened yet. Bad Actors is as good as ever . . . This novel contains some serious, hard-hitting emotions alongside the wit, neat plotting, great action scenes, beautiful descriptions and wonderful schoolboy smut (placed in the mouth of Lamb) we have come to associate with Herron's writing. This is entertainment of the highest class ― Literary Review

This highly topical, beautifully written, indecently entertaining book maintains the impeccably high standards Herron has set for this essential series ― Irish Times

What spurs me to keep reading each new instalment is Herron's absurdist voice, which could devolve into cheap cynicism but never does ― New York Times

Written with the gifted Herron's typical wit, and with Lamb's personality pervading every page, this is the antithesis of the discreet George Smiley ― Daily Mail