The Hunt for Red October
The Hunt for Red October is the first and perhaps the most famous novel by American novelist Tom Clancy. Featuring a young Jack Ryan, Clancy’s most beloved protagonist, the book is set at the height of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. The book starts off at the Soviet Northern Fleet Submarine base at Polyarnyy with Captain Marko Ramius all set to command the Soviet Navy’s new state of the art flagship nuclear submarine, the Red October. We follow the crew of the largest submarine ever built out of the docks for a test exercise to test its novel caterpillar drive, which makes the mammoth of a submarine silent as a whisper and almost impossible to detect.
Little does the Soviet Politburo know that Ramius has other plans. As soon as it sets sail, the submarine disappears and heads for the United States eastern seaboard. Suspicions of dubious behaviour arise when the other Soviet submarines find the Red October missing and their worst fears are confirmed by Ramius’s letter to the politburo, informing them of his defection to the US. The enraged Soviets order the entire Northern Fleet to find and exterminate the Red October. What follows is a wild goose chase for an impossible to detect needle in the gargantuan haystack that is the Atlantic.
Over at the other side, tensions run high when the US detects massive Soviet activity in what they consider their ocean. Things quickly escalate when they learn that a nuclear armed Typhoon class submarine is heading for the United States coastline. Enter CIA Analyst Jack Ryan who smells something fishy about the whole affair and seeks to get to the bottom of it before things get out of hand. The rest of the novel follows Ryan’s race against time to find the Red October and what it is up to before the Soviets blow it to kingdom come.
While not for everyone, I would recommend the novel to anyone who is interested in war thrillers. The book goes deep into submarine warfare, intelligence gathering and espionage. The beauty of this book is in its details and if you are a person who appreciates such things, then you would fall in love with this masterpiece.
