A Maxim Jakubowski selected title.
Ex-American publisher Joe Kanon is a much underrated master of the classic espionage tale, best known for The Good German which was filmed with George Clooney in the eponymous part, but his other novels of spies and the Cold War are all similarly gripping. Defectors, set in the late 1950s and early 1960s introduces two brothers who took different political paths, one who worked for the OSS and then the CIA and has now become a publisher and the other who defected to Russia out of personal conviction following the Spanish Civil War. When the latter, now living in Moscow with his family, writes his memoirs, his brother plans to visit him and is soon confronted by an intricate web of spying, treachery, past sins, shifting truths and regrets. Kanon's strength lies in the realism of his characters rather than the rote exposition of shenanigans and by the numbers action scenes and the results are eminently rewarding. An intelligent chess game-like thriller with a solid foundation of human experience, just the sort of book that hooks you in with stealth and then never lets go. ~ Maxim Jakubowski
If you like Joseph Kanon you might also like to read books by Dan Fesperman, Martin Cruz Smith and Nelson DeMille.
| Primary Genre | Espionage and spy thriller |
| Recommendations: |
Some secrets should never be told. Moscow, 1961: With the launch of Sputnik, the Soviet Union's international prestige is at an all-time high. And the most notorious of the defectors to the Soviet Union, former CIA agent Frank Weeks, is about to publish his memoirs. What he reveals will send shock waves through the West. Weeks' defection in the early 1950s shook Washington to its core - and forced the resignation of his brother, Simon, from the State Department. Simon, now a publisher in New York, is given the opportunity to read and publish his brother's memoir. He knows the US government will never approve the publication of what is clearly intended as KGB propaganda. Yet the offer is irresistible: it will finally give him the chance to learn why his brother chose to betray his country. But what he discovers in Moscow is far more shocking than he ever imagined ...
Defectors features in the following genres: Espionage and spy thriller, Thriller and Suspense, eBooks of the Month, Fiction, Recommendations
Defectors is available in Paperback, Hardback
Defectors was written by Joseph Kanon and published by Simon & Schuster Ltd
Defectors has 290 pages
£8.99
