The Sunday Times: Best Thrillers of 2023. Financial Times: Best Summer Thrillers of 2023. “A classic thriller of the new Cold War.” Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad. A highly topical espionage novel about a Russian plot to cut the undersea communication cables linking the US to the UK. Also, a passionate love story between two people determined to stop this cataclysmic act.Clive Franklin, a Russian language expert in the Foreign Office, is summoned unexpectedly to Moscow to act as translator for the British Prime Minister. His life is upended when he discovers that his former lover, Marina Volina, is the interpreter to the Russian President. Together they will try to stop the attack that could paralyze communications and collapse the Western economy.