Outside Reading Book Review

First Quarter Outside Book Review

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. Naval Institute Press, 1984. Genre: Fiction

The Hunt for Red October is a fictional story about a CIA agent named Jack Ryan, that gathers information for the United States Navy. The Soviet Union informs the United States that the captain of their newest submarine, Marko Ramius, is trying to attack the United States. Jack Ryan, however, believes that Ramius is just defecting to the United States. Ramius designed the submarine, so he was able to make it undetectable, even by his own country. The other Soviet ships were sent out to find it and destroy it because they weren’t sure what it was up to. Jack Ryan knows the real truth and tries to help Ramius and The Red October. This story takes place on several different United States and Soviet Union submarines, as well as at the Pentagon, the White House, and the Kremlin(a fortified complex in the heart of Russia’s capital, Moscow).


“The Hunt for Red October is a thriller that stands in a category all alone, a “military procedural” with an ingenious, tightly woven plot. Clancy’s rich imagination and his remarkable grasp of capabilities of advanced technology have enabled him to create a complex world of dramatic adventure that many will recognize as just one step beyond reality,” the book jacket reads.


The Hunt for Red October is the story of a CIA agent, in the third person. In this story he makes it very clear where, when, and why things are happening. He does a good job using very descriptive words that almost make you feel like you’re in the submarine as an onlooker. It is a well written novel about what can really happen in governments when they get involved with foreign relations.
This story is the first of a series of books about the main character in this story Jack Ryan. The other books in the series are Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, Sum of All Fears, and Without Remorse. These books are similar to The Hunt For Red October because they all involve Ryan getting involved with stopping a foreign criminal. His writing style is very similar in all of the books. He makes it a little hard to follow because in this series of books he goes from one character in one place, to being in another with different characters. They are different because in each story Jack Ryan deals with a different villain from a different place.



“ For three years now he had been working on Fighting Sailor, an authorized biography of Fleet Admiral William Halsey. Nearly all of it was contained on a half-dozen floppy disks lying next to his apple computer.”



I had never read a Tom Clancy novel before and my dad suggested reading one because he really likes them. I enjoyed the story a lot because it was very suspenseful and made me not want to put it down. However, there were some parts that I found very confusing. There would be times in the story where in the middle of something happening in a submarine, for example, he would switch to a scene with Ryan in the Naval offices in Annapolis Maryland.