The Translator: one of the top thrillers of 2023 and of the month for The Sunday Times/Times

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I started learning Russian at the age of 45, and I am still learning, and it is my fifth language, so the idea to make two interpreters my main characters was irresistible. Interpreters keep to the shadows; they are seldom noticed, or remembered, and yet they see and hear everything. I got the central storyline – a Russian plot to sabotage the internet cables which link the UK to the US – from a report written for the Policy Exchange think tank in 2017, called: Undersea Cables: Indispensable, insecure. The author was a little-known MP called Rishi Sunak! Fast-paced political-cum-spy thriller with a chilling ring of authenticity and an eerie closeness to present events in Ukraine. Unputdownable.' Praise for The Translator

Everything the British state has accused Russia of in the last Decade makes its way into this book word for word before one has even got through a quarter of the story, including its inaccuracies & fabrications. In Harriet Crawley’s enjoyable thriller, the title character, Clive Franklin, plans to spend his holidays translating a spot of Chekhov for fun while hiking in the Scottish Highlands. Clive is technically an interpreter, working with diplomats and politicians, but this term makes him “wince”; he prefers to call himself a “translator”, as he thinks this makes him sound more creative. What’s more, he always translates – or, rather, interprets – from his native English into Russian, because “it’s all about controlling what the other side hears”. Controlling the flow of information is a key theme of this fast-paced novel. There he meets his old flame and fellow interpreter Marina, now working for President Serov, with whom she has a queasily filial relationship. Clive and Marina rekindle their romance, only to be drawn into a deadly network of counterespionage and political assassinations; they must race against time to save Britain from the schemes of a hostile Great Power.’

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I think my style is old-school, in the sense that I care about grammar and punctuation, but I hope it’s clear, and unambiguous. I like short sentences, and I think both adjectives and adverbs should be used sparingly. Sometimes I work over sentences many, many times until I find a harmony between the words. As far as structure goes, I think of myself as a storyteller, and I like to take the reader from A to B without too many deviations. I work hard at my dialogue (which I love writing) and I hope it has energy and life. Randall Stafford Crawley (1950–1988), [23] who married Marita Georgina Phillips in 1982. Their two sons (the younger Galen born after his death) and a daughter. [24] His widow Marita remarried Andrew Knight in 2006. For me the plot is always the most difficult, and it is a huge challenge to make it watertight and plausible. If the plot is not credible, the whole book falls apart. A tight plot requires tremendous attention to detail…every piece of the puzzle must fall in place. Sometimes one piece will not fall into place, and you can spend days finding a solution. In The TLS, Muireann Maguire describes The Translator as feeling ‘very much like an updated The Thirty-Nine Steps, complete with fake news, WhatsApp and smartwatches.’ Among those missing, presumed dead, are the parents of two Cornish brothers who were caught in the devastation in Phuket. Louis Barratt Mullan, 16, and Theo, 12, have put up notes pleading for news of parents Catherine Mullan, 53, and Leonard Barratt, 49.

The central character voted for her because he "is tired of men destroying the planet", he voted for her merely "because she was a woman". The characters that make up the delegation to Moscow are full of stereotypes that have all been written before. Fast-paced political-cum-spy thriller with a chilling ring of authenticity and an eerie closeness to present events in Ukraine. Unputdownable.' Xan Smiley, The Economist A highly topical thriller 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.We like to start our interviews by asking our authors to introduce themselves. Can you tell our readers a little about yourself?