From the bestselling author of Leaving Berlin and The Good German comes a fast-paced and richly imagined novel about an American spy, the Cold War’s most notorious defector, who gave up his country for the safety—and prison—of Moscow, but never lost his gift for betrayal.
In 1949, Frank Weeks, fair-haired boy of the newly formed CIA, was exposed as a Communist spy and fled the country to vanish behind the Iron Curtain. Now, twelve years later, he has written his memoirs, a KGB- approved project almost certain to be an international bestseller, and has asked his brother Simon, a publisher, to come to Moscow to edit the manuscript. It’s a reunion Simon both dreads and longs for. The book is sure to be filled with mischief and misinformation; Frank’s motives suspect, the CIA hostile. But the chance to see Frank, his adored older brother, proves irresistible.
And at first Frank is still Frank—the same charm, the same jokes, the same bond of affection that transcends ideology. Then Simon begins to glimpse another Frank, still capable of treachery, still actively working for “the service.” He finds himself dragged into the middle of Frank’s new scheme, caught between the KGB and the CIA in a fatal cat and mouse game that only one of the brothers is likely to survive.
Defectors is the gripping story of one family torn apart by the divided loyalties of the Cold War, but it’s also a revealing look at the wider community of defectors, American and British, living a twilit Moscow existence, granted privileges but never trusted, spies who have escaped one prison only to find themselves trapped in another that is even more sinister. Filled with authentic period detail and moral ambiguity, Defectors takes us to the heart of a world of secrets, where no one can be trusted and murder is just collateral damage.
With âDefectors,â Kanon has become a successor candidate to John le Carré. At a college where everyone seemed astronomically bright, Joe Kanon was the bright guy who was also astronomically nice. That is a winning combination in some professions. He wisely chose publishing, and ascended; he became president of Houghton Mifflin and E.P. Dutton. Then he took a trip to Los Alamos and was hit by an idea for a murder mystery set in the secret atomic lab. Who could write it? At length, he knew â he could. So although heâd never even dabbled in fiction, he wrote âLos…
Great glimpse into 1960’s era Moscow Defectors is a fascinating glimpse behind the Iron Curtain, specifically the Soviet Union, in the 1960âs. Simon Weeks is making an unprecedented visit to the U.S.S.R. to visit his brother Frank, an individual who defected from the U.S. to the Soviet Union in the early 1950âs. Frank has been given permission by the Soviet government to publish his memoirs, and his brother Simon is a bigwig at a publishing company that has agreed to handle the publication. As Frank cannot leave his adopted…
Excellent read I enjoy the work of Joseph Kanon and this book was no exception. I didn’t give it 5 stars because I guessed the main twist in the story early on and I thought the ending was improbable.