Bad Actors

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 * Jackson Lamb is the greatest literary creation of this century . . . Herron is master of the metaphor and his extraordinarily well-plotted books are always centred on real-life events -- Nikki May * Great British Life * An ingeniously structured caper * Mail on Sunday * Satire at its best along with him being one of the best spy thriller writers around * Shots Mag * Britain's finest contemporary thriller series * Daily Express * 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 Carr'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 * One of the best entries in an outstanding series * Daily Express (Scotland), Daily Mirror * What we're reading * i Paper * It's beautifully written with a satisfyingly complex plot and an explosive finale * Daily Record * Like all of Herron's enthralling series, Bad Actors is both thriller and anti-thriller, subverting and denying the treats you expect from the genre, but then sardonically providing them in a twisted form after all * Sunday Times, Thriller of the Month * Anyone who tries to understand modern Britain through its fiction but overlooks Mick Herron's satirical thrillers merits a punishment posting to the critics' version of Slough House . . . Snappily paced, his comic prose fizzes with an epigrammatic chutzpah, softened by elegiac grace notes. . . Herron, in Wodehouse or Pratchett mode, fashions a self-sustaining comic realm . . . it's the line-by-line hits of patter and backchat - part-Nol Coward, part-Joe Orton - that spritz every page * The Spectator * Beautifully written with a satisfyingly complex plot and an explosive finale. Herron remains Britain's finest living thriller writer . . . [A] remarkable talent * Sunday Express * New reade

Mick Herron is the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Slough House thrillers, which have been published in over twenty-five languages and are the basis of the award-winning TV series Slow Horses, starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb. Among his other novels are the Zo Boehm series, also now adapted for TV starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, and the standalone novels The Secret Hours and Nobody Walks. Mick's awards include the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the CWA Gold, Steel and Diamond Daggers. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives in Oxford.