posted 02-08-2023 10:47 AM               

A riveting Cold War thriller for fans of "Top Gun" and "The Hunt for Red October," written by New York Times bestselling author, astronaut, and former pilot Chris Hadfield.

Israel, October 1973. As the Yom Kippur War flares into life, a state-of-the-art Soviet MiG fighter is racing at breakneck speed over the arid scrublands below... and promptly disappears. NASA Flight Controller and former US test pilot Kaz Zemeckis watches the scene from the ground — and is quickly pulled into a dizzying, high-stakes game of spies, lies, and a possible high-level defection that plays out across three continents.

The prize is beyond value: the secrets of the Soviets' mythical "Foxbat" MiG-25, the fastest, highest-flying fighter plane in the world and the key to Cold War air supremacy. But every defection is double-edged with risk, and Kaz must tread a careful line between trust and suspicion. Ultimately, he must invite the fox into the henhouse — bringing the defector into the heart of the United States' most secret test site — and hope that, with skill and cunning, the game plays out his way.

For New York Times bestselling author Chris Hadfield's second heart-stopping thriller, we move from space to another rich and exciting part of Chris's own history: his time as a top test pilot in both the US Air Force and the US Navy, and as an RCAF fighter pilot intercepting armed Soviet bombers in North American airspace. Full of insider detail, excitement and political intrigue drawn from real events, The Defector brings us the nerve-shredding rush of aerial combat, as told by one of the world's best fighter pilots.

• Hardcover, 464 pages
  
• Mulholland Books (October 10, 2023)
  
• ISBN-10: ‎0316565024
  
• ISBN-13: ‎978-0316565028

I am so excited to bring personal, real-world experiences as a combat fighter pilot to my new action thriller, "The Defector." It follows Kaz and Svetlana from Star City to Israel to the secrets of the Nevada desert, in an action-packed real-world twist of what happened next, after "The Apollo Murders." Just writing the aerial combat scenes got my heart pounding – I can't wait for everyone to read "The Defector"!