Connor Martin
The Silver Fish
In this thrilling espionage fiction debut, an American journalist in Ghana is pulled into a dangerous struggle for control of the world’s fiber optic cables.
The Writer’s Dossier 4/6/2026 – The Connor Martin interview
(The podcast episode is coming soon!)
DOSSIER: When you say you split your time between Washington and Brooklyn, what feels better: that moment when you’re leaving Washington for Brooklyn or the other way around?
MARTIN: One hundred percent, the moment I’m leaving Washington for Brooklyn. Nothing against our nation’s capital, but New York is home. When I’m in D.C., I’m working. My head is deep in the national security policy space, and a Lawfare podcast about transaction structures in the critical minerals market is my idea of a good time. When I’m home, I’m with my family. It’s just a happier place: I’m reading, I’m daydreaming – I’m thinking and feeling more like an artist. No surprise, my best writing happens in New York. Either way, my Amtrak points balance is the envy of the Northeast Corridor.
Why Ghana?
DOSSIER: In your hot new thriller ,THE SILVER FISH, why did you choose Ghana as your point of operations in Africa instead of some other country? (Togo never gets any love.)
MARTIN: Pretty simple one here: I spent a summer in Ghana, but have never been to Togo (although I did see into it from the top of a mountain hike). Many of the scenes in the book are taken directly from the journal I kept that year. Ghana is an incredibly dynamic country, a young country with an ambitious population. It is precisely the sort of place where the contradictions of our planet’s unsettled future will be decided, and it’s a ripe setting for the characters in the book–Dani, James, Billy, and The Double–to unravel their own. Having said all that, we absolutely do need a spy novel set in Togo and I can’t wait to read it.
What a rebel
DOSSIER: From your time working on the Committee for Foreign Investment and the Council of Foreign Relations (suit & tie required), what is it about the continent of Africa that many Americans don’t understand in terms of its global strategic importance?
MARTIN: First of all, I’m an iconoclast, so sometimes, when I’m feeling wild, I’ll go suit-no-tie at Treasury and CFR. But in all seriousness, my time in the government and working on foreign policy more broadly has given me first-hand insights to the vital importance of Africa in the world today. As one of the characters says in the book, in many ways Africa is skipping entire stages of development that other parts of the world have experienced and jumping right to the mobile-optimized, always-online future that awaits us all. Unsurprisingly, the scale of this economic opportunity means that it is also a very active arena for geopolitical adversaries to face off with one another. Just because stories about Africa don’t always make the headlines in U.S. media doesn’t mean that what is going on there won’t have a direct impact on every American’s lives.
The classic story question
DOSSIER: When did you know that THE SILVER FISH was the kind of book you wanted to write instead of something more touching like, oh I don’t know, a Nicholas Sparks novel
MARTIN: From the beginning, I knew I wanted to write the kind of book that I love to read: one that gets the reader moving through a rich, unfamiliar setting and that is full of action, action, action. At the same time, I wanted to wrestle with the classic questions that all great stories pose: what does it mean to have an identity? Who are we, to ourselves and to others? It turns out that a spy novel is the perfect vehicle for exploring those questions!
The Last Word
DOSSIER: If the staff at The Writer’s Dossier disclosed all their research on you, what would be the most revealing? Your Instagram posts seem pretty interesting, but there’s more to Connor Martin than meets the eye, isn’t there?
MARTIN: Something tells me the staff at The Writer’s Dossier is pretty thorough in their diligence! But one thing you’d have to poly me to admit is that when I was a kid, I had a single speaking line on the T.V. show Rescue Me (great show, by the way, about New York City firefighters). When the credits rolled, my character’s name was revealed to be “Friend of Kid with Head Stuck in Fence.”
Discover Connor Martin on Instagram | Website | Goodreads | and Amazon