Search results for ""Mick Herron" "Bad Actors""

Book SynopsisTHE EIGHTH BOOK IN THE SERIES BEHIND SLOW HORSES, AN APPLE ORIGINAL SERIES NOW STREAMING ON APPLE TV+Mick Herron, “the le Carré of the future” (BBC), expands his world of bad spies with an even shadier cast of characters: the politicians, lobbyists, and misinformation agents pulling the levers of government policy. “Confirms Mick Herron as the best spy novelist now working.”—NPR's Fresh AirIn 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.

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Book Synopsis*Discover The Secret Hours, the gripping new thriller from Mick Herron and an unmissable read for Slough House fans**Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman*THE INSTANT #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'A pitch-perfect espionage thriller' Sunday TimesIn MI5 a scandal is brewing and there are bad actors everywhere.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*'The foremost living spy novelist in the English language' New Statesman'This is entertainment of the highest class' Literary Review'The man is a genius' The SpectatorTrade ReviewBad 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 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 *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-Noël 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 readers attracted by the TV version of Slow Horses will find Herron at his very best * Mail on Sunday, Mail Online *The foremost living spy novelist in the English language -- John Gray * New Statesman *I roared through Mick Herron's new Slough House novel, Bad Actors, with the odious, odorous genius Jackson Lamb at its heart, and a couple of loathsome main characters who surely only coincidentally resemble well-known British political figures of our time * Robert Macfarlane *The man is a genius * The Spectator *One of the most consistently enjoyable literary achievements of the past decade * The Times *Mixes his trademark black comedy with insights into the tangled moral universe we inhabit . . . Herron at his very best * Mail on Sunday *Herron stands firmly in the line of descent from Ian Fleming. It is fitting that he has been given the broadcast treatment because - following the death of John le Carré - he is at the summit of what I believe is a new golden age of spy fiction . . . Herron began writing about a private detective and switched to spy thrillers in 2010, but it was eight years before he made it big. While he won awards, his books barely sold. His second, Dead Lions (2013), did not even secure a hardback release in the UK. It was only when the publisher John Murray rescued him from obscurity that he began to enjoy commercial success - he recently topped one million sales for the Slough House series -- Tim Shipman * Sunday Times *I love Mick Herron's books, both for what they are - which is: pitch-perfect, fantastically-written, hilariously-funny spy capers - and also for what they say about Britain . . . Herron is not just a top-notch thriller writer, but a satirist of the first order -- Oliver Bulloughs, WaterstonesMick Herron's Slough House spy thrillers, about a duff MI5 unit, got me through journeys, despite egregious politicking (the latest, Bad Actors, is in paperback) -- John Lewis-Stempel * Country Life books of the year *

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Book SynopsisA brilliantly conceived and audacious novel from one of our most consistently intelligent and beguiling writers' William BoydSurefooted and emotionally generous A serious achievement' GuardianMasterful' TelegraphA revelation' SpectatorThe new novel from the Booker shortlisted author of The Northern ClemencyAn order is issued. A population may not meet, or touch or speak to each other. They stay inside, and the reality of a few streets in a capital city emerges. An underground river is discovered; an urban grove of pomeloes emerges. The imagination reaches out, and makes sense of the world. By the sea, two men walk into a future of uncertain violence.There is time now to see the human dramas within a hundred yards (an abduction, a quiet breakdown, an outbreak of violence, a young mind beginning to stretch itself); to wait for the weather to change; to understand that what lies underneath this part of the city are seasonally wet pastures and woodlands.Written in four parts, To BatterseaTrade Review‘A brilliantly conceived and audacious novel from one of our most consistently intelligent and beguiling writers’ William Boyd, author of The Romantic ‘Surefooted and emotionally generous … A serious achievement … Less a book about the pandemic and more a book about the stories we tell ourselves about the pandemic; billions of stories, fragile, partial, and essential, each one a small but vital act of reclamation and remembrance’ Guardian ‘Interesting and innovative … A different kind of state-of-the-nation novel; an exercise in imagination and empathy born out of a moment of collective crisis’ Daily Telegraph ‘A revelation: a comedy of suburban manners slowed to the point of nightmare’ Spectator ‘Challenges everything we might have taught ourselves to expect from fiction… Wise, ingenious and passionate’ TLS ‘Bears [Hensher’s] hallmark brilliance … Magnificently succeeds in excavating the sedimentary layers of a neighbourhood in lockdown’ Financial Times ‘Eloquently distils the way in which enforced social distancing made us see the world around us through fresh eyes … an impressive addition to the canon of lockdown fiction’ Mail on Sunday ‘Playful, philosophical, sensual, violent and funny … But above all, it’s defiant: an account of confinement that refuses to be confined’ Literary Review ‘A master novelist and prose stylist … Shifts from sublimely evoked reality to terrifyingly, clearly imagined dystopia’ Country Life ‘Masterly in marrying observations of the minutiae of the lives of ‘ordinary’ people with huge, soaring themes’ AnOther Magazine ‘An imaginative tour de force. The first great lockdown novel, and perhaps the only one we'll need’ Mick Herron, author of Bad Actors ‘Utterly engrossing’ Lissa Evans, author of V for Victory

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