Debut author Connor Martinโs espionage thriller, The Silver Fish, is a powerful tale of foreign intelligence in West Africa where people are not who they say they are, and life is expendable. The page-turning book puts the reader in the heart of the story as American journalist, Danielle (Dani) Moreau pursues what she believes to be a big story only to discover thereโs an even bigger story that jeopardizes her life and more.
Judith Erwin: What made you decide to write a novel?
Connor Martin: Honestly, it’s been a lifelong love and ambition, like probably any writer. I started as a readerโa lover of great fiction, authors I admired, genres I admired. And at some point, when I was pretty young, I began experimenting, imitating, sketching things outโseeing if I could create my own original work. This particular novel, I started writing about nine years ago.
JE: How did the plot for The Silver Fish come about?
CM: There were a couple of pieces of the plot that fell into place in different ways. The first is the setting. I wanted to write a book set in Ghana because I had spent time there when I was a teenager, I spent a summer there. I had a vague idea that I wanted to tell a story around the technological changes that are happening in Ghana and how it’s gone and currently going from a relatively underdeveloped country, leapfrogging the middle stage of development, to the mobile-optimized, always-online world that everybody is now a part of. The specific plot around Dani, around James, around the Double, and Billy came about through my other career, which has been in the national security world, including in the government. And wanting to tell a stylized, fictionalized version of a story that had the themes I’ve seen really happening around the U.S. and China competing with each other in Africa and all over the world. In the case of this book, itโs these underwater cables. I think not many people in the general public are aware that’s how the Internet works.
JE: In The Silver Fish, people arenโt who you think they are.
CM: Definitely. That’s what I love about the spy fiction genreโthe espionage genre. To me, all literature is about questions of who am I? Who is another person? How can you really know what secrets weโre keeping from ourselves, from each other? Going way back hundreds of years, that’s what novels have been interested in. But a spy thriller makes them very plot-focused and sort of fun, page-turning. It’s like a page-turning way to sort of engage with those questions.
JE: What came first, the characters or plot?
CM: I would say that, in order, it went setting, themes, characters, plot. I had a good sense of where I wanted the book to be. I had a good sense of geopolitical stuffโwhat I wanted the book to speak to. And then, I had a really good sense of Dani and James. I would say Billy and the Double as characters took a little longer to come to me. I put these characters in conversation, in this setting to try to speak to these themes, and that’s how the plot itself emerged.
JE: Do you have a favorite character in the book?
CM: Yeah, that’s a good question. Honestly, I think my favorite character might be the Double, which may be a surprise if you’ve read the book. Obviously, I love Dani. She is sort of the main character, has most of the real estate in the book. I love her. But in terms of who’s the most interesting? Who did I really wrestle with the most and have to sort of get to know in the course of writing the book? I would say it would be the Double.
JE: Was any aspect of it difficult to write?
CM: Good question. The hardest part was moments in the book where characters try to explain. For example, there’s a moment in the book where a character explains how these undersea cables work to another character, and it takes a couple pages.
JE: Was it hard to write the close-quarter combat scenes?
CM: You know, it actually wasn’t too hard to write. It was kind of fun. I’ve never been in hand-to-hand combat myself. I didn’t want it to feel, which you can sometimes feel even in great spy fiction, like there’s a perfect choreography. I wanted the fights to feel chaoticโlike two people who were trained or maybe strong in all these things, but ultimately, there’s an element of chaos and an element of randomness anytime there’s a physical fight happening. That was kind of fun to put myself in that space in my imagination.
JE: Tell me a little bit about you personally. I read where you were the person trying to keep foreign governments from buying property near U.S. military bases. What was that like?
CM: Yeah, I found it really important and high-stakes work. Real estate, particularly real estate purchases near military bases or other sort of sensitive locations.
JE: Are you still doing that, or is your job different now?
CM: Now, at least in the short term, my main focus is the novel. But I’m moving into a similar space, the sort of foreign policy, national security space, but outside the government, for a think tank, which is called the Council on Foreign Relations. It’s giving me the chance to think about these issues and write about them in ways that you can’t when you’re in the government.
JE: Do you have another novel in the works?
CM: Sure do. I have the sequel to The Silver Fish started, and I’m under contract for that with the same publisher. Yeah, it’s great fun. I’m working on it now. Expect it to probably come out at some point next year, or early the following.
JE: What do you see as your future now? Author or policy, security, government?
CM: My ultimate goal, at least for now, is to continue working in both worlds. The book industry is a very different industry from government, think tanks, and foreign policy. What I tried to do with The Silver Fish, like I was saying, is trying to take these actual issues I’ve seen firsthand in the real world, in these very serious and often quite dry settings. And there is great work, thought, and leadership happening around the U.S. and China, but you don’t see so much of it in popular culture. You don’t really see many movies, novels, or TV shows that focus on the U.S. and China and what stories are happening as this real thing is playing out. So, I wanted to fill that gap a little bit with The Silver Fish.
Judith Erwin is a retired attorney, journalist, and award-winning author of romantic suspense and crime fiction, including the series Shepherd & Associates. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Florida Writers Association, and the FBI Citizens Academy Alumni Association.
