I was curious to read this because I actually went to hear Chris Hadfield give a talk earlier this year and he was brilliant. This is described on the cover as a Cold War Thriller and has a whiff of authenticity about it, because in his earlier life the author was a Cold War pilot, a USAF test pilot and an astronaut. (And he’s still a big cheese at NASA.) Set in 1973, it’s the story of a Russian pilot who defects to the West bringing a state-of-the-art MiG fighter plane with him. The pilot is immediately whisked to the USA for debriefing and one of his American ‘minders’ is former Navy test pilot Kaz Zemeckis, who’s tasked with keeping the Russian secure and safe. Not as easy as it sounds, especially when they move him to the top-secret test site, Area 51. The book’s flyleaf carries the words: “Many of these people are real. Much of this actually happened.” I found it fascinating trying to untangle fact from fiction and the story was gripping. Cornish Eskimo, Oundle Crime