THE DEFECTOR

Reviewed by Steven H Silver

Chris Hadfield created an alternate history in which the Soviets and Americans find themselves in space together during the Apollo 18 mission in The Apollo Murders. The primary character of that novel was Kazmimiera "Kaz" Zemeckis, a one-eyed pilot who had been grounded and give the task to liaise with various astronauts. In The Defector, Hadfield picks up Kaz's story six months later, during a vacation in Tel Aviv with his girlfriend, Laura Woodsworth, when he witnesses a plan being shot down over the Meditteranean. Reporting what he saw to the American embassy causes him to be pulled into a world of international intrigue.

On the eve of the Yom Kippur War, Soviet Colonel Alexander Vasilyevich, codenamed Grief, lands an apparently damaged MiG-25 at Lod Airport outside Tel Aviv and asks the Israelis for help in defecting to the United States. Kaz manages to get pulled in and assigned the task of accompanying Grief to the United States. The novel follows Kaz, Grief, and CIA handler Bill Thompson as Grief is given asylum in the US and his debriefing begins. Unaware of his defection and believing him killed when his plane went down in the Mediterranean, The Russians move forward with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Alexei Leonov, Valery Kubasov, and Svelana Gromova, the last of whom was a character in The Apollo Murders, find themselves in the U.S. training with Tom Stafford, Vance Brand, and Deke Slayton for the historic mission. A chance meeting between the two groups in Las Vegas may be the clue the Russians need that Grief survived his crash.

For an alternate history thriller, The Defector has very little alternative history in the novel and, although the tension does built in the final part of the novel, most of the book is surprisingly low-key. Most of the novel focuses on Grief's adjustment to living in the US under the watchful eye of Kaz and Thompson and Svetlana's assignment to the ASTP. Things go surprisingly smoothly for both groups of characters. Rather than building the tension between the groups, or outside forces, Hadfield focuses on building his characters and showing their interactions with the world, specifically the differences between the Soviet and American systems in the 1970s. His attention to detail, especially when it comes to aircraft and piloting, is exceptional.

The Defector is not as tightly plotted as The Apollo Murders. Hadfield introduces several plot points which are either dropped almost immediately or lead to dead ends. While the novel opens with the Israeli response to the attack by Arab states on Yom Kippur and Grief's defection, once Kaz and Grief leave for the United States, teh Yom Kippur War is not mentioned again. In some cases, dropped storylines are necessary red herrings, but too many of them in The Defector seem to simply be missed narratives. At the same time, he offers logical wrinkles, showing the Russian bureaucracy dealing with the sudden awareness that Grief may have survived his plane being shot down despite their intelligence gathering operation and the need to learn what really happened while simultaneously ensuring that any individual looking into the situation can't be blamed for the failure.

In the end, Hadfield does offer up plot twists which are not telegraphed. His characters are well drawn and likable, each working to their own goals, which may conflict, but none of presented as villains. Hadfield manages to capture much of the Zeitgeist of the 1970s era of the Cold War as he Soviets and Americans attempt to find detente while also attempting to come out ahead of their rivals.

Return to