Defectors

Joseph Kanon has written eight espionage novels, each one set in a different place and historical period, ranging from Germany just after World War II (The Good German) to New Mexico during the development of the first atomic bomb (Los Alamos). He’s established himself as one of the very best in the spy genre, right up there with Alan Furth, Daniel Silva and John Le Carré. Defectors, Kanon’s latest, is set in Moscow in 1961, during the height of the Cold War. It begins as Simon Weeks, an American publisher, arrives to visit his older brother, Frank, a former CIA agent who 12 years ago defected to the Soviet Union after being exposed as a spy. Frank has written a memoir and asked Simon to do a final edit of the manuscript. Simon soon realizes that the small British and American defector community continues to hoard secrets, nobody more so than Frank, who soon enlists his brother in a potentially fatal plot. How it plays out is absolutely fascinating. This book is available in the Butte County Library.