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From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy
Message-ID: <1566@mtgzz.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Jan-86 11:46:31 EST
Article-I.D.: mtgzz.1566
Posted: Fri Jan 17 11:46:31 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jan-86 07:36:23 EST
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		    THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy
			 Berkley Books, 1985, $4.50.
		       A book review by Mark R. Leeper

     Suppose you want to learn about life on a whaling vessel a century ago.
What is the best reference book to read?  (And don't you ask yourself that
all the time?)  My sources tell me that the best reference work is MOBY
DICK.  Every once in a while a novel comes along that is so well researched
it is an education to read it as well as reading an entertaining story.
What must be a best-selling novel--based on the number of people I have seen
reading it--as an education in submarine warfare as well.  The book is
Clancy's THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER.

     The story deals with a great Soviet submarine commander who has had all
of his roots to the USSR destroyed by failings in the Soviet system.  His
wife was killed by a drunken doctor's malpractice, but the doctor is the son
of a high Party official so nothing can be done.  She might have been saved
but for the unreliability of Soviet drugs.  So Marko Ramius has had it with
the USSR and decides to use his command of the Soviet submarine RED OCTOBER
to get revenge.  With a complete plan he turns his submarine west, north of
Scandinavia, and toward the Western Hemisphere.

     THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER combines a good, though not great, thriller
with a good, though not great, education on modern naval warfare.  I read
the book on vacation all the time wishing I had my copy of THE U.S. WAR
MACHINE by Ray Bonds to add even more detail and illustration, but Clancy
writes with complete credibility about matters of defense I would not have
dreamed were public knowledge.  One never gets the feeling that Clancy's
technical detail is anything but flawless.

     One does get the feeling, however, that THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, like
the film THE FINAL COUNTDOWN, is as much an ad for the U. S. Armed Forces as
it is a piece of dramatic narrative.  One almost feels sorry for the Soviets
in this book as they are so thoroughly out-gunned and out-thought by the
Americans that one wonders why they bother opposing the John-Wayne-like
Americans at all.  We see none of the incompetence of the aborted Iranian
hostage rescue.  Americans are killed by mechanical failures, but not nearly
so spectacularly as the Soviets are.  (Hey, in this book when the Soviets
have a mechanical failure, they do it up right.  I rarely go back to read a
scene a second time.  But this one scene is far and away the most
enthralling in the book.  If you don't want to read the whole book, have
someone who has read it point out this scene.)

     THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER is a good story and an enjoyable book to read.
What makes it as popular as it is is a little tough to understand.  It is
just a very readable text on naval warfare wrapped in a moderately good
story.  Rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.


					Mark R. Leeper
					...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper