The Hunt for Red October

Tom Clancy

Apr 1992 · A Jack Ryan Novel Book 1 · Sold by Penguin

About this eBook

Don't Miss the Original Series Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Starring John Krasinski!

The #1 New York Times bestseller that launched the phenomenal career of Tom Clancy—a gripping military thriller that introduced the world to his unforgettable hero, Jack Ryan—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.
 
Somewhere under the freezing Atlantic, a Soviet sub commander has just made a fateful decision. The Red October is heading west. The Americans want her. The Russians want her back. The chase for the highly advanced nuclear submarine is on—and there’s only one man who can find her...
 
Brilliant CIA analyst Jack Ryan has little interest in fieldwork, but when covert photographs of Red October land on his desk, Ryan soon finds himself in the middle of a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek played by two world powers—a game that could end in all-out war.

Ratings and reviews

My favorite of the Tom Clancy books and one of my favorite books of all time, The Hunt for Red October is a thrilling novel that show the the thought that Clancy put into all of his books. The story of a Soviet Submarine Commander (Ramius) defecting without the knowledge of the majority of his crew is an amazing tale that allows the reader to follow the problems that he encounters from the sides of the Soviets, Americans, British, and the Red October itself. In regards to the comparison to the movie, of course the screenplay will be condensed and for people who want more action than thought (this is not a criticism) the movie will be the better choice as the action will be more predominant. For the thinkers, the novel reveals the plot much more slowly and is FAR more advanced to allow the reader to come up with his or her own theories about what will happen. Lets face it. Spoiler alert. We all know Ramius is going to make it, but we don't know how, and the novel reveils this in a much more mentally stimulating way.

Good exciting book with great plot. I loved it. Every Tom Clancy book I read I love. This one's full of unexpected twists and turns. It is mostly about naval activities. It gives great details and very exciting actions. It is a hard reading level but you just got to understand what;s going on. T.C. always writes fasanating books with great details. The book starts out with the Russians (in the Red October) wanting to do one thing but end up doing a whole other thing.

An exciting political and naval thriller, that takes the reader into the depths of the Atlantic and the Cold War. Clancy's strength is his masterful description about technical subjects and situations, and it's clearly shown here: although characters are slightly one-dimensional, the whole environment feels realistic and well-thought. A must-read if you're interested in strategy, cold war history, or naval thrillers!

About the author

A little more than thirty years ago Tom Clancy was a Maryland insurance broker with a passion for naval history. Years before, he had been an English major at Baltimore’s Loyola College and had always dreamed of writing a novel. His first effort, The Hunt for Red October—the first of the phenomenally successful Jack Ryan novels—sold briskly as a result of rave reviews, then catapulted onto the New York Times bestseller list after President Reagan pronounced it “the perfect yarn.” From that day forward, Clancy established himself as an undisputed master at blending exceptional realism and authenticity, intricate plotting, and razor-sharp suspense. He passed away in October 2013.