Mirth, at the possibility one of the country’s shortest-serving prime ministers thought it was a story that needed not one but multiple weighty tomes to tell.

“Who’s going to rush out to buy a book about Kevin’s childhood in Queensland,” as one Labor staffer put it to Saturday Extra.

And here it is, the first installment running at 571 words if the helpfully appended maiden speech is not counted – the life and times of Kevin from Nambour from birth to the landslide election victory which swept John Howard from power and brought Labor back from the political wilderness after almost 12 years.

But Rudd’s Not for the faint hearted also raises the question: where have all the other actors in that tortured five year ordeal disguised as government gone?

The answer, it seems for many, is not too far from the fray.

One of the most central figures in the downfall and resurrection of Rudd, then factional hard-head Bill Shorten, is Labor leader.

Having been swept from office after years of sniping at Julia Gillard – now absconded to a host of charitable and educational organisations not least as chairwoman of Beyondblue – Labor changed the way its leadership change to include rank-and-file members in 2013.

They wholeheartedly backed Anthony Albanese, a loyal Rudd supporter, but Shorten was elected leader anyway with the backing of his elected colleagues.

Always helpful, Rudd this week returned to the headlines, praising Albanese as “a great future leader of the Australian Labor Party”.

And he’d be “less trusting of some of the folks I worked with” if he had his time as prime minister over again, Rudd said this week.

The wounds of being knifed by Gillard and the factional “faceless men” is clearly still with Rudd. Despite the book, released this week, ending before any rumination on his time as prime minister, Rudd can’t help but take a swipe at the “factionally subservient”.

“At its worst, the union-based factional system represents a triumph of mediocrity over meritocracy, of seniority over ability, of power over policy, a world where power equals policy,” he writes.

“Ideas are generally not welcome in a deeply factionalised party.

“The factions see new ideas as irrelevant at best or a metaphor for subversion at worst.

And where are the others? Wayne Swan, the man who took aim at Rudd in his own book for being “vindictive and juvenile”, remains on Labor’s backbench.

Always helpful, Rudd intervened here this week: “Keating always said to me that the Treasury is the best tutor in the world. It can actually, you know, turn an open and rational or untrained mind into someone which is fully at ease with the Treasury portfolio. So I thought that Treasury would train him up. It didn’t quite work out that way,” he told the ABC.

But there are plenty of Rudd backers left on the benches too.

Sam Dastyari, after a short stint on the backbench after scandal relating to donations from Chinese companies, has returned as deputy opposition whip.

Richard Marles, who quit as parliamentary secretary in 2013 over his role in a botched coup against Gillard, is Labor’s defence spokesman.

Joel Fitzgibbon, once a Gillard backer who was later reportedly caught openly counting votes for a switch back to Rudd, is Labor’s agriculture spokesman.

So too are Mark Butler, in energy, Chris Bowen, treasury and Kim Carr, industry.

David Feeney, who Rudd once famously told to “get f...ked” and who was later instrumental in having him knifed in favour of Gillard, hangs on in the backbench after a disastrous election campaign last year during which he “forgot” to disclose a $2.3 million house.

Others jumped. Former factional heavyweight Mark Arbib, a key figure in Gillard’s coup, left in 2012, and is now a close lieutenant of billionaire James Packer.

Stephen Conroy, who resigned as communications minister after Gillard fell in 2013 and is described by Rudd as “hunted in a pack” with Swan and “ice-cold” former defence minister Stephen Smith, now represents the online bookies at Responsible Wagering Australia.

But while many Labor insiders in Canberra have been quick to laugh at Rudd’s re-emergence – revealing he so humbly declined to be made a Companion of the Order of Australia, taking aim at Victoria’s proposed euthanasia bill, urging Shorten to expel the militant Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union from the party – others are more cynical.

A faltering Coalition could hand Shorten government, and pave the way for many of the familiar faces from the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years to return to national prominence.

Just in time for Rudd’s second volume, and all the muck raking that will surely be contained within. Imagine the headlines.