Tom Clancy Red Winter (Jack Ryan Novels)

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Speaking of characters that we know from the original books written by Tom Clancy, several make an appearance - Mary Pat, John Clark, and Dan Murray to name a few. While Mary Pat appears in The Cardinal of the Kremlin, he is meeting her for the first time in Red Winter when she is assigned as his field agent for the mission. While Foley and Ryan are battling against the bitter cold in Europe, the Nevada desert is heating up after a highly secretive aircraft unexpectedly crashes. A deep cover East German operative tasked with surveillance of the nearby airfields is one of the first to the scene, absconding with a piece of the radar shielding technology that may turn the war from cold to hot. A top secret F117 aircraft crashes into the Nevada desert. The Nighthawk is the most advanced fighting machine in the world and the Soviets will do anything to get their hands on its secrets. The truth is, Tom Clancy is the author that brought the military thriller genre to my house. It was The Hunt for Red October which was later turned into a movie (that I still adore as well) the first book I read by this author. The story begins in Berlin, 1985. The crushing stalemate of the Cold War continues as the East and the West engage in their usual espionage games. The most valuable piece on the board is an apparent Stasi source embedded deep within the CIA, providing invaluable information to the East Germany intelligence agency. However, the espionage balance is about to tip once again, when a young American embassy worker is handed a note in mysterious circumstances, apparently from a high-ranking member of the Stasi who wishes to defect to the West with a trove of information.

If you love espionage novels where the spies rely on chalk marks and dead drops, then you need to read this book.Speaking of characters that we know from the original books written by Tom Clancy, several make an appearance - Mary Pat, John Clark, and Dan Murray to name a few. While Mary Pat appears in The Cardinal of the Kremlin but I can't remember if Ryan met her then. It seems like he is meeting her for the first time in Red Winter when she is assigned as his field agent for the mission. As events unfold in East Berlin, a problem also arises in Nevada. An experimental plane has crashed. The crash was witnessed by Garit Richter, a deep cover East German spy who was camped along with a group of watchers hoping to see a UFO. After killing two members of the group, Richter manages to escape with a piece of the plane that has an experimental coating on it. The pilot had ejected and witnessed Richter’s actions from a distance, setting off a massive manhunt for the spy. But ultimately this is post-Clancy Clancy, and perhaps I’m taking it too seriously. It was a fun book, and I loved having another young Ryanverse novel—as if some secret file of his had just been uncovered. I’d love to say give us more of these, but that may just cheapen it, as some of what made it so enjoyable is that we never ever get these.

I’ve decided to write this post because even after the author’s death, several other authors continued to write the books under his franchise, so, thankfully, the series is not dead! Also, there are several series that are interconnected and are part of the same universe, and often keeping the series separate is not so easy unless you have read all books (which I have). New York Times bestselling author Tom Clancy is considered a legend among crime-fiction, thriller, military, and spy-thriller writers and readers alike. The large cast of characters is present here, too. Given how far Ryan, John Clark, the Foleys, and Dan Murray have gone in Clancy's later works (not to mention the novels since his passing), there's both a thrill and a challenge in returning to their earliest days. Cameron rises to both, highlighting and capturing how far Ryan had come from Patriot Games and Red October on his journey to becoming the character he would be by the time of Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears. Other familiar names and faces feel present and correct if sometimes popping in for cameo appearances in the cases of Greer and Ritter. The result is that, as well as a thrilling story, Red Winter feels like a reunion with old friends that have been long overdue. And, as a reader who got much out of those early Clancy novels, Cameron's work on Red Winter feels like a return to form.As Cold War espionage novels are my first love I was super excited that we delved into a previously untold story from Ryan's past in Red Winter. Everything that made me fall in love with the genre is present in this book. The drama and the tension of never knowing who to trust and the real dangers of spycraft in a low-tech world made it nearly impossible to put this book down.