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ICE AXE for the OLIGARCH: French Overture
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Dec 25 2025
Pages: 126
Weight: 0.39
Height: 0.27 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
by Vladimir Sher-Lumière
On the French Riviera, where jazz meets espionage and every note hides a secret, a new kind of war begins.
Alex Veresov, trombonist of the Foreign Legion Orchestra, is known to the world as a musician - disciplined, elegant, silent.
When a former president dies of natural causes in his seaside mansion near Nice and a Ukrainian minister mysteriously disappears, European intelligence services are thrown into chaos.
The murders are clean, precise, and soundless - like perfectly tuned chords in a deadly composition.
All the victims share one thing: a faint trace of a hidden musical signal in intercepted transmissions.
In the underground world of intelligence, whispers begin to spread about a ghost operative known only as The Ice Axe - a man who executes verdicts without witnesses, hesitation, or mercy.
And Veresov realizes the unthinkable: every strike of the Ice Axe begins with his own music.
His jazz sessions, his sheet notes, his performances - coded communications for a clandestine network called The Triad.
The Triad is not an agency. It's not a cartel.
It's a hybrid organism born from the ruins of old spy networks, corporate espionage, and private vendettas.
No names. No borders. No ideology.
Only precision - and silence.
From Marseille to Monte Carlo, from Paris to Geneva, cities become stages for this invisible symphony.
Every act of violence - a movement. Every disappearance - a modulation.
And somewhere in the background, Veresov keeps playing, trapped between the rhythm of loyalty and betrayal.
The DGSI follows him.
Ukrainian intelligence hunts him.
Moscow listens - patiently, silently.
Each side believes they control him, but the real conductor remains unseen.
At home, his wife Liza feels the distance growing.
Between night shifts at the maternity ward and the fading warmth in their home, she senses a truth she cannot name:
Alex has already crossed the border between man and instrument.
Ice Axe for the Oligarch: The French Overture is not just a spy novel - it's a musical thriller, a fusion of noir intrigue and the rhythm of a man losing his soul to a perfect operation.
In the world of Vladimir Sher-Lumière, jazz becomes code, love becomes collateral, and death sounds like a closing note played too beautifully to be real.
The author combines the elegance of European espionage with the pulse of modern political drama - cinematic, psychological, and precise.
It's not about who pulls the trigger.
It's about who writes the score.
Book One of the Ice Axe for the Oligarch trilogy.
To be continued in Assault in Notes and The Final Chord.Also from
Chtcherbyna, Volodymyr
Le Piolet pour l'oligarque: L'Assaut en partitions
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Ледоруб для олигарха 3: Фи

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Chtcherbyna, Volodymyr
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Ледоруб для олигарха 1: Фр

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