Retro-reading: Star Trek: Traitor Winds, by L. A. Graf

Star Trek: Traitor Winds

Star Trek: Traitor Winds
by L. A. Graf

A few weeks ago, I was desperate for some escapist comfort reading. You might think that reading half of everything Elin Hilderbrand had ever written would count as comfort reading, but it doesn’t. Hilderbrand’s Nantucket novels are beach reading. I wanted something light, familiar, and completely unrelated to my real life. I wanted comfort reading. As I often do – and have no problem admitting – I immersed myself in a Star Trek novel. Since I was also feeling nostalgic, I re-read a classic Star Trek novel, from when they were still being numbered: Traitor Winds by L. A. Graf

This is TOS Trek, not Trek 2009, and it takes place between the TV series and the first movie. Newly promoted Admiral Kirk is stuck behind a desk in San Francisco, Sulu is testing stealth shuttles in New Mexico, McCoy is practicing country medicine (when he has to) in Georgia, and Uhura is leading a communications seminar, teaching at Starfleet Academy, and Scotty is overseeing the refit of the Enterprise. And Chekov? Well, he was turned down for command school because he was too young, and chose to enter security school in Annapolis, instead.

During one of their regular get-togethers for dinner, McCoy suggests that Chekov contact a friend of his who is doing a study of disruptor damage in order to develop treatment. Despite taking flak for it from a more senior student at the Security School, Chekov gets the gig, and winds up involved in a murder investigation, and running for his life, hiding, at one point, among the wild ponies on Assateague Island (apparently Graf grew up reading the Misty books, too).

It’s a novel that takes place in winter, mostly in really cold places, and more than once I wished I was reading it while curled in front of the fire in a cozy chalet filled with log furniture, instead of while curled up in a deck chair by the pool (I know, I should complain, right?), but it was nice revisiting characters I grew up with, in a familiar setting with a twist, and I enjoyed re-reading it immensely.