Planes – The Unseen Library

The Defector Cover

Publisher: Quercus (Trade Paperback – 10 October 2023)

Series: The Apollo Murders – Book Two

Length: 369 pages

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Former astronaut turned thriller author Chris Hadfield returns with his second excellent novel, the intriguing and clever historical read, The Defector.

Back in 2021, I was lucky enough to receive a copy of superstar astronaut Chris Hadfield’s cool and much-hyped debut novel, The Apollo Murders. Set during the Cold War, The Apollo Murders depicted an alternate history adventure where a fictional Apollo flight mission to the moon suffered all manner of calamity, including murder, treachery, and unexpected Russian hitchhikers. Thanks to Hadfield’s knowledge of history and spaceflight, this turned out to be quite the gripping read, and The Apollo Murders ended up being one of my top debuts for 2021. As such, I have been eager to see how Hadfield planned to follow up his first book, and I was quite excited when I saw that his second novel was a sequel to The Apollo Murders. This book, The Defector, was an excellent and compelling thriller which I had a brilliant time getting through.

Israel, 1973. On the eve of the Yom Kippur War, a Soviet test pilot makes the bold decision to fake a crash in his state-of-the-art MiG fighter and secretly land in Israel. Claiming that he wants to defect to the United States, the pilot, known by his codename, Grief, and his plane are traded to the Americans, who desperately want to know the secrets of the MiG and how it achieves such impressive altitude.

Having witnessed Grief’s defection while on holiday in Israel, NASA flight controller and former Navy test pilot Kaz Zemeckis is quickly drafted in to take carriage of the captured MiG and to work with Grief to fully understand the plane’s limitations and capabilities. Their unlikely partnership eventually takes them to the most secure and secret location in the United States, Area 51, where Grief looks set to provide all the information the Americans have ever wanted about the MiG. However, not everything is as it seems, and it soon becomes apparent that Grief has his own reasons for wanting to defect to the United States. Can Kaz get to truth before it is too late, or has he let a wolf right into the heart of America’s most secret air base?

This ended up being an excellent and exciting novel from Hadfield that successfully follows up his original debut and provides a cool and intense new story that proves very hard to put down. Hadfield tells a pretty tight and compelling story in The Defector that starts strong with the mysterious Grief defecting right in the middle of the Yom Kippur War. This initial excitement morphs into an intense and gripping game of cat and mouse, as Kaz attempts to utilised Grief’s knowledge and keep his defection secret from the Soviets, while the Russian pilot works to initiate his own plans.

This continues for much of the book, and I thought this ended up being a much more focused and well-structured thriller narrative than we previously saw from Hadfield in The Apollo Murders. The focus on espionage and military secrets was a great centre for the plot, and Hadfield did a good job on also utilising some intriguing characters, especially Kaz and the mysterious Grief. The inclusion of a couple of fictional supporting characters from The Apollo Murders, namely a cosmonaut and a major Soviet antagonist, was also quite interesting, although as they were mainly there to set up a future entry in the series it did disrupt the narrative flow a little. Everything leads up to the big conclusion, which Hadfield set up nicely throughout the course of the story. While I do think that Hadfield might have considered utilising a twist to change the antagonist around, it was still really fun to see the full plan unfold, as well as the real reasons behind the defection. Watching the manipulation and the resulting violence unfold was very impressive, and it led to a satisfying, if slightly predictable, final showdown with the protagonist that ended everything on a high note.

I really enjoyed how well The Defector came together, especially as Hadfield reused all his best writing elements from The Apollo Murders, while also strongly utilising his own personal experiences and knowledge as a test pilot. The constant switching between perspective characters, as well as several interludes and flashback sequences, helped to produce a complex, multilayered storyline, and I liked seeing the various players in the plot attempt to work out what everyone else is doing. It also allowed Hadfield to hide some good hints about the antagonist’s true motivations and feelings, which came out perfectly at the end of the book. There was also some great character growth around the protagonist Kaz, especially as Hadfield successfully built on his personality and relationships from the first book, and it is clear that the author has some future adventures planned for him.

However, the real strength of The Defector lies in Hadfield’s encyclopaedic knowledge of military airplanes, Cold War espionage history and spaceflight, which was masterfully inserted into the plot. Much of the plot revolves around the desire for both sides of the Cold War to get a better understanding of their opponent’s aircraft capability, and Hadfield expertly examines the history and mechanics around this. The discussions about aircraft, fighter capabilities and more, are all quite fascinating, and Hadfield does a wonderful job of exploring them in a highly detailed way that readers unfamiliar with aircraft can easily understand. His experience also allows for some highly realistic and intense aerial combat sequences, and I really enjoyed the elaborate scenes that resulted, especially the cool conclusion. This grasp of aircraft, the history surrounding their development, and the espionage involved, are well worked into the plot of The Defector, and I loved how much it increased the authenticity of the book, making it so much better.

Overall, The Defector was an outstanding second novel from Hadfield that I had a wonderful time reading. Containing a clever and well-paced spy thriller narrative loaded with intriguing details about aircraft and the cold war, The Defector had me hooked from its first awesome scene, and I managed to power through this book in no time at all. Compelling and action packed, The Defector was an outstanding follow-up to The Apollo Murders and I cannot wait to see what Hadfield writes next.

The Defector Cover 2

Amazon

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Publication Date – 7 January 2019

From Australian thriller author Michael McGuire comes a fast-paced story of death and mysterious disappearances in the skies which takes the reader on a high-octane thrill ride.

Every day, thousands of planes fly across our skies, transporting huge numbers of people and goods from one end of the world to the other. Many countries’ economies depend on the successful flights, and people have placed their trust in these machines to carry us. So when a plane mysteriously disappears without a trace off the coast of Australia, it sends shockwaves throughout the entire system.

Ted Anderson is a disgraced former pilot who has found work as an investigator in a top-secret Australian government intelligence agency. Sent by his bosses to find the missing plane, Ted travels to Indonesia to investigate the pilots. But as he uncovers strange clues in one pilot’s apartment, another plane disappears, and then a third. Like the first plane, no trace of these other missing aircrafts or their passengers can be found, and no organisation is claiming responsibility for the disappearances.

As the world descends into chaos and most people refuse to fly any more, a sudden need to escape from a squad of Indonesian police sees Ted forced onto a CIA plane to New York. While waiting for a flight home to Australia in a nearly deserted JFK airport, Ted observes a suspicious pilot about to leave on a trip to the Ukraine. With all his instincts screaming that this pilot’s plane will be the next one to disappear, Ted makes an insane choice and gets on the plane.

This is the second book from McGuire, following his 2017 political thriller debut, Never a True Word. This sounded liked an exciting thriller from a relatively new Australian author, and I was eager to see how McGuire would present an Australian espionage edge to this sort of story.

Following several high-profile disappearances or crashing of airplanes in recent years, the potential dangers of air travel have been made obvious to most people; therefore it was a bold choice by the author to focus a story around this. A lot of the suspense in this novel is based on the realistic dread that the characters within the story must be feeling as they contemplate the disappearances occurring. The sequence where the protagonist finds himself waiting in a plane that is potentially about to disappear is particularly harrowing, and the reader is able to feel the protagonist’s apprehension and worry. The results of these missing planes are also pretty gruesome in places, which adds to this storyline’s intense nature. I felt that McGuire did a fantastic job of crafting a fairly interesting mystery thriller out of this story premise. The eventual reveal of who or what is behind it is pretty intriguing and sets up some potential follow-up novels that will be worth checking out.

One of the main things you can say about this book is that it is extremely fast paced, which allows the reader to read through it rather quickly. There is barely a quiet moment, as the protagonist jumps from one situation to the next, attempting to uncover who or what is behind the disappearing airplanes. I rather liked this fast-paced approach to the story, as it fitted with the intense story content and reflected how quick and intense real-life intelligence agencies would jump into investigating events such as the disappearing planes featured within Flight Risk. This book is not as action-packed as you would expect from a thriller novel, but the author is still able to convey an exciting and compelling tale that keeps the reader on their toes. In addition, there is an extremely electrifying sequence in the air which serves as the book’s set piece. These inclusions mean that Flight Risk is very easy to read, which provides the reader with vast amounts of fun and some significant thrills in the right places.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about Flight Risk was the portrayal of how an Australian intelligence organisation would react to a devastating event such as those examined within this book. It was pretty cool seeing an Australian intelligence agent being at the centre of this world-wide event, and I enjoyed getting a look into his viewpoint about intelligence gathering. I thought it was intriguing to see McGuire’s depiction of the differences between Australia’s intelligence assets and other countries, such as America. For example, the Australian protagonist gets an iPad and some fake IDs as his gear, while his American counterpart gets a whole team and a military jet to investigate the disappearing planes. I enjoyed this realistic and noticeable difference between the American and Australian agents and their resources, and thought it added a unique element to the book. I also thought that the author’s examination of the world-wide implications of multiple disappearing planes was very clever and I liked the author’s look at the economic and social aspects of such an event.

Overall, I found Flight Risk to be an exciting new novel from Australian author Michael McGuire and I enjoyed the fast-paced action, enjoyable thriller elements and an intriguing new examination of Australia’s spy agencies and their place in the world’s intelligence communities. I did find the overall lack of any significant female characters a bit concerning, but I enjoyed the book’s story and thought this was a great piece of Australian thriller fiction.