Each year in Russia, more than $6bn is paid in bribes and as much as half of the country's $140bn public spending budget is siphoned off illegally. Welcome to the "pirate state" of modern Russia, a nation ruled by a "criminal conspiracy" of Soviet-era ex-spooks. Lucas tells a gripping story of organised crime, big business, corruption and, of course, espionage. He argues that Russia's spies didn't die out with the cold war but are alive and ruthlessly exploiting the weaknesses of our open societies to gain diplomatic and commercial information. They are suburban spies such as Anna Chapman, deported in 2010, as well as more traditional deep-cover agents, such as Herman Simm (arrested in 2008), the former policeman who became Estonia's national security chief and whom Nato described as "the most damaging spy in the alliance's history". The picture Lucas paints of the gangsterdom and abuse of power in modern Russia is shocking. It is, he says, a "tyrannical, criminal and murderous" country whose main export is corruption.