It starts like a scene from Top Gun. But in words, not in images. The viewing effort is immediate for readers (if there are any…) who have not seen the films starring Tom Cruise; or who, unlike Chris Hadfield, have not spent thousands of hours in a fighter jet, a space shuttle or on the International Space Station (of which there are many).
However, the former combat pilot and astronaut, when he becomes a novelist, knows how to play the tricks of fiction. After introductions that require reading… let’s say, active, it plunges the reader into the heart of exciting techno-spy thrillers that take place in the 1970s. Understand: in the middle of the Cold War, towards the end of the Apollo missions, of the Vietnam War and the presidency of Richard Nixon.
It was like this in Apollo, deadly mission. The defector. Let the hunt begin is of the same (very) living water. We find (joy!) Kaz Zemeckis, test pilot turned flight controller for NASA who played a leading role in the (fictional) Apollo 18 mission. In this second novel in the series (the seeds of a third volume are in fact planted in this one) which takes place entirely on Earth, Zemeckis finds himself, thanks to this coincidence which does things so well, on vacation in Israel.
It is October 1973. Yes, the Yom Kippur War will soon break out. But what draws Kaz into this new adventure is this MiG-25 which lands (in disaster?) at Lod airport in Tel Aviv. Nicknamed the Foxbat, it was the fastest Soviet fighter plane of the time. On board, Alexandre Abramovitch, known as Griff, test pilot and colonel of the armed forces of the USSR. He announces that he wants to defect to the United States and has valuable secrets to deliver… including his device.
Kaz’s vacation is cut short. Head to the mysterious Area 51, in Nevada, on the heels of the defector. In order to collect his “revelations” and, above all, to verify if the deserter is really who he says he is. After all, one traitor can hide another…
In this regard, Chris Hadfield seems to take great pleasure in playing cat and mouse with his readers: how many times does he lead them in one direction regarding Griff’s designs, before pushing them back and to reanalyze the situation with new data! Skillful. Like his way of mixing his story with History; and those few words that fall at the end of each (very short) chapter, tempting the reader for a few more pages.
On the other hand, the scientist “cups” the writer here and there. Where lovers of technical details (and scenes at the Top Gun) will be satisfied, some may be tempted to skim over the explanatory or descriptive sections which slow down the action and, for some, seem dull. But for those who take the time, they prove fascinating, seen from the inside through the eye, experience and pen of Chris Hadfield. The difference is all there.