Published in 1984 by the Naval Institute Press, The Hunt for Red October marks Clancy’s debut as a writer and also gives birth to one of the most enduring characters of military thrillers, Jack Ryan. The books is loosely based on the failed mutiny of a Soviet submarine of the Cold War era and follows the adventures of Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius, a Russian nuclear submarine captain, who intends to defect to the United States.
Although the book is littered with technical terms and names of two dozen secret and not-so-secret government organizations from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, it still reads fast. The action-packed pages of the book take the readers into the offices of the highest ranking military leaders of the Soviet Union and the USA and familiarize them with the political decision making process in sensitive cases, such as, let’s say, the defection of a Russian to the West.
The main plot of The Hunt for Red October is supported by several sub-plots that eventually come together as one, bringing about a satisfactory conclusion. Some of these minor plots were later picked up by Clancy in his next novel, The Cardinal of Kremlin, where we find out the ultimate fate of the submarine.
If you’re into submarine chases, CIA agents, spies and technology, then I’m sure you will enjoy the novel as much as I did. Unfortunately, towards the end of the book, you kind of get tired of all the twists in the plot. I believe that the novel could have easily been brought to an end as soon as the Soviets turned the fleet following the Red October around, as planted proof of its destruction ended up in the Soviets’ hands.
It is expected that a fictional book about modern warfare should concentrate on male characters, but I found the lack of female characters in Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October quite strange. Apart from the mention of a wife, girlfriends or daughter waiting at home for the return of the submariners, there is absolutely no female character present in the book. Of course, the reader won’t forget that what triggered Ramius’s decision to defect to the US with Russia’s most advanced submarine was the death of the captain’s wife, Natalia. She died in a Soviet hospital due to a doctor’s incompetence (who was never made responsible for his mistakes as he was the son of a Politburo member).
In 1990, soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the novel was made into a very good movie starring Sean Connery in Ramius’s role and Alec Baldwin in Ryan’s. Both the book and the movie jumpstarted Tom Clancy’s career as a novelist, making him one of the most successful writers of our time, with millions of copies sold worldwide.
