Dr Berlin is the third novel, Making Enemies and Secret Kingdom being the previous two, in Francis Bennett's Cold War trilogy. All three are reissued in Faber Finds." "

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Like the first two Dr Berlin centres around a pivotal moment in the Cold War: the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. As one reviewer of this book remarked, 'the Iron Curtain had become concrete. '

Dr Berlin is a successful academic at the Moscow Institute of History and leads the privileged life of a Party member. But he is also the secret servant of a corrupt regime, an informer who betrays his friends and colleagues alike. Sickened by his own weakness, weary of his life of deception, he is trapped in a morally empty world where he plays his part in manufacturing the lies that conflict with what he knows is true. On the eve of departure to lecture at Cambridge University, he is asked by a disillusioned faction in the Soviet military to deliver a message to the West in the hope of preventing the conflict expected throughout the world. Can he redeem his life of deception through one courageous act?

'This is another rare piece of subtle and complex storytelling, an excellent continuation in Bennett's Trollope-like chronicling of the Cold War years.' Peter Millar, "The Times "