Defectors Paperback

When your brother betrays his country, is he still your brother?Frank Weeks is an American version of Kim Philby, a highly placed mole serving the Soviets in the 1940s. He defects when his cover is blown.His brother Simon, his own government career destroyed by his brother’s scandal, now works in publishing. A dozen years later in 1961, he goes to Khrushchev’s Moscow to work on Weeks’ memoir. (It’s called “My Secret Life”, a nod to Philby’s similarly named memoirs “My Silent War.”)At the outset I found this implausible: that Simon Weeks would be let in by the Russians, that the book’s editor would be the author’s brother, and so on. But Kanon makes it all fly, and every detail becomes important. Their relationship’s ambivalence - Frank was always the leader and instigator, while Simon was the follower and good boy - creates the story’s tension.Upon Simon’s arrival Frank stuns him by asking his help arranging for Frank and his wife Jo to escape back to the west. Simon must now choose. He was in the OSS during the war, but a desker, not a field op. He’s now being asked to play a dangerous game on the most dangerous turf imaginable. Virtually every conversation and movement is likely to be monitored by the world’s scariest secret police. Frank must gracefully maneuver his minder out of the way just to talk to Simon about it.And Simon must decide whether to trust his brother - bold, charming, brilliant, one of the world’s most gifted deceivers, and now a KGB officer. If Simon gets gamed here, it’ll look like he collaborated with the KGB.The McGuffin here is Jo. She’s collapsed into alcoholism since the death of their only child. Frank fears the KGB will send her to permanent rehab to lock her down. He wants to get her home and is willing to sing to the CIA to get it done. Simon - his own marriage shaky - still has residual feelings for Jo; he’d met and dated her before she married his brother. With her in the mix he doesn’t feel he can walk away, even if he wants to.It takes every ounce of Simon’s resourcefulness to do what Frank wants - and when it comes time, to plot his own course.All the ambiguities make the book. Simon’s marriage and relationship with Jo are ambiguous. His feelings for his brother, whom he once loved, are ambiguous: Frank disgraced the family. (‘Say - aren’t you Benedict Arnold’s brother?’) His relationship with the CIA, which has briefed him and wants to be kept in the loop, is ambiguous. Frank makes nice with the KGB goon who minds him and still sounds like a true believer in the cause. But if so, is he really ready to turn his back on it?Kanon shines a light on the defector milieu. Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean make cameos, but not Philby, who in 1961 had not yet defected. The other defectors we meet are fictional, but moved in the same circles as atom spies Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenbergs. They’re skilled field agents, connoisseurs of surveillance, people who understand the KGB and CIA from the inside. One, making off from Los Alamos with atomic bomb plans and facing a police search on her train, sticks them in her hatband and then coolly gives her hat to a cop to hold while she rummages through her purse for her ID.They’re ideologues, the Spanish Civil War generation, not in it for the money unlike today’s spies. They still see themselves as struggling for a better world, despite seeing socialism hasn’t lived up to its hype. They lapse into rhetoric about equality or America’s injustices with ease, despite enjoying privileges like fresh produce and vacation homes that most Soviets can only dream about.Distrusted by Soviets trained to distrust and avoid foreigners, they congregate mostly with each other. Except for Weeks, they’ve got little to do, no longer useful to the KGB. One commits suicide. Another is an informer. They’re spied on constantly. It’s not much of a life.In the realm of today’s better fiction, Kanon owns the Cold War just as Alan Furst owns prewar intrigue and Philip Kerr owns Nazi-era crime fiction. Kanon’s period recreation is spot on. The story of Kim Philby is a gift that, to good authors, just keeps on giving.

I liked this book enough to finish it. But it's not one of Joseph Kanon's best. The plot is simple but the action is sometimes difficult to follow. The long conversations made it difficult to keep track of who was doing the talking. I have read numerous books with lots of characters, especially with unusual names. I know a lot about Russian history and culture, but this story was utterly confusing at times. I felt like I needed to write out a list of the characters as I went along just to keep track of them. I recommend this book if you like spy novels, but get ready for a bumpy ride.

Curse you, Joe Kanon! This brilliantly crafted spell binding novel managed to cost me most of a night's sleep trying to finish it. As he always does, Kano has an ear and eye for the period he's writing about, and a knack for bringing a city and era long past to life. The book focuses on the lives of a bunch of defectors from Western intelligence services living uneasily in 1961 Moscow. By itself that's an original topic for a novel.The two protagonist brothers, Simon and Frank Weekes, an American publisher with loose ties to US intelligence, and his older brother, Frank, an out and out defector from the CIA and an officer in the KGB, make an interesting subject for Kanon. I suppose Frank is loosely based on British traitor Kim Philby, but the book occurs before Philby ran for cover in the USSR. And I suppose the idea of Frank writing a memoir owes something to Philby's book. But, reader beware, this is not a roman a clef about Philby. If you think it is, you wander down one of the neatly placed blind alleys Kanon provides to mystify.Some spy and mystery novels read as if the author suddenly looked at his word counter and realized he only had a few pages left under his limit and had to compress two chapters of nattative into 500 words. Not this one. There is no sense of narrative abridgment, even though the last several chapters move with the speed and precision of a race car on a twisty road and the firepower of an M1A1 tank.A great read!I'm glad the author included a map of Moscow, although it would have been more useful had there been more place names. One wonders why Dzhersinsky Square is called Lubyanka Square*; when was the name changed? And a map of Leningrad and surroundings would have been good to have.*The mystery solved. It's the one anachronism Kanon let slip in. Historically the name is Lubyanka Square. From 1926-1990 it was Dzherzinsk Square in honor of Felix Dzherzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police. In 1961 it was Dzherzinsky Square, and the map should reflect the times.

I read this book in chapters, one a day, like watching episodes on the TV. It felt like being in a Hitchcock film, the tension superb. A Cold War story set behind the Iron Curtain. A pretence of "freedom" but no way the illusion could be maintained. Being watched and listened to all the time... microphones in the lighting, the telephone... take a walk in the park... but do the trees have ears? I let it build up, a chapter at a time, an episode each day... no cheating (even though I really wanted to). I let the story unfold. God, Kanon is good. Do you think he did this as a career once?... and the drama, and the tension, stayed right to the end.

A character driven spy thriller which keeps you guessing until the end (well, it did me!). Really well written, with a real flavour of early sixties espionage motives, morals & multiplicitous mendacity! Lots of 'who, why & how' to work out too & be entertained by. Doesn't feel trapped by it's 50 year old setting either, seems pretty timeless.

I like Kanon because he doesn't seem to try too hard. There's an easy rhythm to his stories. Defectors takes you into what must have been a very claustrophobic place : the open prison inhabited by traitors in Moscow. The story between the brothers is believable. The setting vivid. The tension lies not so much in the chase but the interplay between the protagonists, the traitor brother and the visiting sibling. It's not a romp more of a leisurely but thoroughly enjoyable stroll.

Joseph Kanon never disappoints. Here is yet another breathtakingly brilliant tour delete force from the master. The expression ' I couldn't put it down' would be faint praise for this novel. His settings are always immaculately described, his period knowledge and grasp of the zeitgeist unmatched. This captivating tale of deception and devotion grabs you and doesn't let go till the final, shocking conclusion. Not to be missed.

Kanon is a new discovery for me. I enjoyed Defectors which is very much in the le Carre/Furst genre of well-researched and written spy thrillers. I will be catching up on his back catalogue.