Red Rabbit

Rating:
Summary: Change of Time Pace and Method
Review: Opinion always varies on a new book by an author as prominent as Tom Clancy. He has written some of the best work in this genre, and by so doing has set high expectations for his tales. "Red Rabbit", is likely to generate a wider range of opinions than his previous works. The book is his newest release, but in chronology it goes all the way back to events set after his clash with the IRA and his becoming Sir John. This is also as far away from his traditional offerings that I can remember. The pace is entirely different, and all the high tech action is essentially gone.

While there is new information about Jack Ryan who has become so prominent in many of his novels, Ryan as a character does not appear as a focus much more than any other player. Clancy does use Ryan to explore the conflicts of loyalties that his character may face as a Catholic, an American, a CIA employee, and a man that is defined by his ability to think with logic, but also is a man of faith. Clancy has replaced his epic fictional battles with a piece that is closer to historical fiction The primary event is one that all will be familiar with, and it is a credit to the author that it never reads as readily familiar as one would first expect. The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II and the story that many believe explains it, is quite well known.

This is primarily a story about two systems of government with a great deal of the information shared as first person reflections by historical figures like Yuri Andropov. The task Clancy set for himself was significant, how to tell a story that virtually anyone who reads the book already knows how it ends, and has heard of the parties likely responsible. This is like making a movie of the sinking of the Titanic. Much of what takes place after the decision to kill the Pope is approved is secondary. The why of the decision and the mentality of those who felt the threat from the Pope is the story.

The decision to kill a head of state is monumental even for a government like the former USSR. Add to the target's importance that he leads a church that has existed for over 2,000 years, and now you have a target that is virtually without parallel. The decision to proceed with the assassination, when viewed almost two decades later, was monumentally inept. That statement may seem obvious, but it was a blunder of massive proportions even by the standards of the former USSR. A person can argue forever as to how certain the downfall of the USSR was, and who was the pivotal character, or what was the pivotal decision that set the destruction in progress.

The person generally offered as the Russian who precipitated the collapse is Gorbachev. He played a role, he was there when the camel's back finally broke. However the collapse, as defined by a definitive event, as opposed to a philosophical one, were the events fueled by Solidarity in Poland, and a Pope that threatened to resign and go home and support his people. This was a man who had dealt with a variety of opponents, including the Nazis without caving in, and his personal safety was not a factor that could be exploited. Alive he was a threat, only the USSR thought his murder would stop all that he represented and supported.

Khrushchev caused some consternation when he denounced Stalin at the 20th Party Congress. This same man then was to act as recklessly as any Soviet leader when he played a game of nuclear chicken over Cuba. Even the balance of his Politburo was unnerved by the stupidity of that adventure. His removal from office was unique in that he lived through it. His successor was a man who would remain for many years, many years of plodding along and decaying in office.

Clancy has written a very thoughtful book without all the usual hardware. This is about conflicting ideologies and why one was preordained to fail. A state can claim it is godless, that does not make its citizenry devoid of any faith. The same state can act without regard for individual and national rights, it does not mean that its citizens lose all sense of what is right and what is wrong.

Clancy adds a great deal to this historical event, and as he has demonstrated before, he has access to information and cooperation from a variety of sources, that other authors do not enjoy. This is not a traditional 5 star Clancy book, not all of his books have merited that type of praise. I believe such praise is warranted here, for as an author he walked away from the formulas that have made his books guaranteed number one bestsellers, and put on paper a more thoughtful work, and left all the hardware behind. The only shots fired are those you expect once you read the jacket, there is no attempt to hide this book's departure, and for 618 pages he maintains interest not through all manner of tension that will be predictably resolved, rather he conducts a study of events that finished whatever rotting was required for the USSR to finally fall.

Rating:
Summary: Clancy's back with a vengeance!
Review: Red Rabbit rocks. I'd give it 5 stars but it did start on sort of slow so I gave it 4. Clancy gets into the mind of someone who would betray their country because his country is about to kill an innocent man for political gain and portrays it convincingly and interestingly and quite believable. The theme of resentment caused by the evils of communism or whatever idealogy is back which made earlier books more interesting. The way the CIA gets the Red Rabbit out is ingenious and cool. Not a lot of action but he get into the minds of the various characters, both good and bad.

Rating:
Summary: A Clancy cop-out
Review: Why does an author that gave us the incredible "Hunt for Red October" never write another novel that can hold a candle to his first one?

With each successive book, Clancy seems to be "in the churn out" mode without any real interest in character/plot development. Reading Red Rabbit reminds me of a book I read when I was 12 years of age. It's simplistic, repetitive (how many times do we need to be reminded that Ryan was knighted, that Sally gives sloppy kisses, etc.), unimaginative, and took way too long to tell the story (could have been done in half the amount of pages with more impact).

What a shame. Clancy is no longer on my must read list. Come on Tom....you can do hell of a lot better and have. Give us the 21st century equivalent of your first novel and we'll be very happy. Did you even write the Red Rabbit?

Rating:
Summary: Clancy mailed it in
Review: If this was the first jack Ryan book it would have been the last. Perhaps it was ghost written by the OP Center scribes

Rating:
Summary: Buh-huh-orring
Review: I love Tom Clancy's work but I feel very let down by this latest effort. The book is extremely boring, with excessive inner dialog, repetitive jokes and references, and the only action in the entire book is the "hurry up and take a meeting" sort which is normally limited to the first third of a political thriller.

The book does feature a lot of familiar players in addition to Jack Ryan, most notably Ed and Mary Pat Foley on their first few days in Moscow, but if you have read The Cardinal in the Kremlin then you already know these characters better than what Red Rabbit will show you. I was waiting with bated breath for Clancy's return to the Soviet-era intrigue which made The Cardinal in the Kremlin and The Hunt for Red October so good, and Red Rabbit did not fulfill that expectation.

This book was written with the intention of providing a script for a new movie featuring Ben Affleck as Ryan, but I have no idea how any movie would be worth seeing if it's faithful to this book.

Rating:
Summary: Ryan returns to his roots, sort of...
Review: Tom Clancy has had a good run with the Jack Ryan series, starting with The Hunt for Red October, then the prequel Patriot Games, and a series that followed him after all the way to the White House. Unfortunately that seems to have boxed Clancy in a bit: now that Jack's the President, and had two books in the office, what further adventures can he have? The answer is to return him to the days when he was a novice CIA analyst, and have him be involved in some things we haven't heard much about before, spy stuff that's interesting, to say the least.

One difference between this book and the previous ones is that the events involved aren't totally fabricated. This is, after a fashion, a modified historical novel, though it only takes place about 20 years ago. I won't give away the plot, or even what the premise is, because if you haven't heard the story it's a surprise. Suffice it to say that it'll make the Solidarity movement in Poland, and various other events of that era look completely different.

We also get early looks at the other characters in the Ryan cast, from his wife to Admiral Greer, Dan Murray from the F.B.I., and even Ed and Mary Pat Foley, who work the Moscow station with aplomb as the Nick and Nora Charles of espionage. It's all very fun.

I do have a couple of small quibbles. The characters say things like "thinking outside the box" and "been there done that got the t-shirt" that I believe to be sayings of the 90's, not the 80's, and practically none of the characters in the later books don't appear here. Even Mr. Clark appears briefly, though he's in someone's thoughts, rather than in the story.

All of that being said, it's still a very good book, and I enjoyed it, especially the premise, which is very well-done and constructed and very interesting. Lastly, from the ending, you're not as curious as to where he's going from here with the series: the author leaves a large hint there will be a sequel following this book.

Rating:
Summary: TALKY AND TEDIOUS
Review: Without a doubt, this book is a must for fans of Jack Ryan, the character who dominates most Tom Clancy novels. The story in "Red Rabbit" fills a gap in our knowledge of Ryan's life. However, Clancy could have done a lot better by Ryan. This novel is talky to the point of being tedious. The characters, American, British, and Russian, seem to say the same things again and again. And talk is about all the story consists of.
That snapping, twisting action and suspense that we have come to expect of Clancy is missing here. Part of the problem, of course, is that we already know that the Pope, who was attacked in the nineteen-eighties, survived the assassination attempt. The other part of the problem is that Clancy does not create any real suspense in the process of giving us his fictional version of how it all occurred.
In fact, the plot is ponderous and stretched far too thinly. Clancy wrote an extremely good novel once about the spy game between America and Russia. It's called "The Cardinal of the Kremlin." If you are not a big Jack Ryan devotee, but you want to read Tom Clancy when his writing and plotting crackled with tension, try "Cardinal of the Kremlin." You won't regret it.

Rating:
Summary: I'M sorry I "red" RABBIT
Review: Oh No! A Tom "Clunker". This filler of a book between Patriot Games and Cardinal of the Kremlin is as exciting as STAR WARS Episode II. I understand a prequel or a sequel but these "midquels" have no surprises and are redundent. Len Deighton did it with great success but there was alot of mysteries to solve. In the first 100 pages, he repeats himself in this book dozen's of times(chess analogies,lawyer joke(not jokes),origin of KGB building,etc) Great title,read title and then throw away unopened book.I Loved his other books,so sad.

Rating:
Summary: Tom Clancy and Jack Ryan try to get back to the basics
Review: Tom Clancy's last Jack Ryan novel, "The Bear and the Dragon," was a certifiable disaster. In an attempt to keep toping his previous novels Clancy stopped short of an outright alien invasion and had Jack save the world when Russia and China go to war. For the me the unpardonable sin was that unlike every other Tom Clancy novel, "The Bear and the Dragon" did not have any scenes I wanted to reread again and again from time to time.

So when Clancy decided to go back in time to those thrilling days when Jack Ryan was still the new kid on the block at CIA and Admiral Greer's fair-haired boy, I thought it was a good move. "Red Rabbit" takes place in between "Patriot Games" and "The Hunt for Red October," but because it takes place more in the real world, do not bother yourself with making things fit exactly. There are plenty of real figures running around in this one, although not the Queen and Prince Charles, good friends of Sir John and Lady Ryan that they are, but rather KGB head Andropov, a Polish Pope, an American president who used to be an actor, and a female British Prime Minister.

When I began reading "Red Rabbit" I thought it was obvious that Clancy wanted to write about the downfall of the Soviet Union. After all, he dedicated two of his books to Ronald Reagan as the man who won the war. But the straw that broke the camel's back was Reagan's endorsement of SDI (a.k.a. "Star Wars") because the Soviet Union broke the bank trying to keep up spending money it did not have and the problem is that it this effect was unanticipated (a nice way of saying there was a major element of luck involved). Clearly Clancy wants to do a little historical revision along those lines, not that there is anything wrong with that.

However, that quickly becomes a side issue in "Red Rabbit" which has two major plot threads. The first is Andropov's decision to assassinate the Pope for threatening to support the counterrevolutionists (i.e., union workers) in Poland. The second is the defection of a member of the KGB (the "Red Rabbit" of the title). Of course, the two threads come together. Meanwhile, Jack putters around England with little to do while Ed and Mary Pat Foley are having all the fun in Moscow.

There is an element of suspense involved and if you are surprised seeing as how you remember that Pope John Paul II was not assassinated way back when, then you have probably never read/seen "The Day of the Jackal" or "The Eagle Has Landed." No, the complaints about this novel are going to have more to do with how often it seems like Clancy is covering old ground, from the minute details about running agents in Moscow to Bob Ritter having a cow every time Ryan does anything. I was troubled more by how the back and forth between the two plot lines finally gives way to the predominance of one and then the other. This reflects Clancy's tendency to covers the reader's eyes and ears at key points so he can set something up, but is not especially justified by this particular story line.

"Red Rabbit" is an okay Jack Ryan novel, constituting a sort of back to basics in terms of espionage. There are a few decent scenes worth a second look, but nothing like the treasured scenes I recall from novels past. We might have to get use to the idea there is not going to be another great Jack Ryan novel. I really think Tom Clancy needs a stronger editor. Not just one that would have stopped him from doing "The Bear and the Dragon" (he had set up the possibility of a novel about a presidential campaign, which would have worked well off of the whole rebuilding the government from scratch idea he had been developing), but one that points out to him that he has various characters making the same comments two or three times. Did nobody bother to look or did no one dare to mention it to the author? Then again, maybe the simple irony is that Tom Clancy's writing career has achieved the same sort of destructive momentum of Jack Ryan's career as a character.

Rating:
Summary: One Of The Best Of The Year
Review: I rank Tom Clancy's "Red Rabbit" as one of my favorite best books of the year so far along with the less-known "Blackhawk Down" by Bowden and even lesser-known "West Point" by Remick. Clancy spins another clever fictional drama in "Red Rabbit" that is full of the usual detail of Clancy books.