Red Rabbit

I have been reading Tom Clancy novels for probably the last 10 years, and have been reading them in chronological order of publication date. I enjoy Clancy, as his writing is fairly straightforward, simple, easy to follow and usually quite interesting. His writing is my only experience with military fiction, so I enjoy the uniqueness of it compared to the other fiction I read.

Red Rabbit was originally published in 2002 fairly soon after September 11th. I though I recalled that Clancy said he couldn't think of a way to write a new novel based in the real world because of the attacks, but it might have been more because he had tapped everything he thought he could after the attacks that was in his realm of understanding. Either way, this book is set in the past, between Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October.

What I thought was really cool about this book is that it is, in part, based on real events. Mainly, that of the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. However, this also made the book a little bit slow moving. I wouldn't call it boring, as I actually enjoyed all 618 pages of it, but not a lot actually happened in it.

We got a good glimpse of the early days of Jack Ryan and Mary Pat and Ed Foley, but setting the story around real world events meant that Clancy couldn't use his usaly technique of building up an intricate plan that is only thwarted at the last minute. In fact, the plan wasn't thwarted at all in this book, the heroes had nothing to do with the failed assassination attempt. That was a bit of an anti-climax.

Ultimately, this was a fun read for me because of my familiarity with the characters and my interest in the cold war. Check it out if you haven't read it before but already enjoy Clancy.