Nevada – The Unseen Library

Red Winter Cover

Publisher: Sphere (Trade Paperback – 13 December 2022)

Series: Jack Ryan series

Length: 419 pages

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Prepare for another adventure from classic spy thriller character Jack Ryan as Marc Cameron once again visits Tom Clancy’s iconic universe for an amazing read with Red Winter.

Now, I am the first to admit that I have more than a few gaps in my reading knowledge, especially when it comes to some of the classic, long-running crime fiction or thriller series. Perhaps one of the most significant of these are the works of Tom Clancy, whose books, particularly those featuring protagonist Jack Ryan, are very highly regarded and have resulted in many films and other adaptations. The Jack Ryan novels have continued for years, even after Clancy’s death, with several authors contributing great new stories to the wider series. Well, I am about to dip my toe into Clancy’s universe for the first time by checking out the new Jack Ryan novel, Red Winter. Written by established thriller author Marc Cameron, who has already contributed several recent entries to the series, Red Winter was an intriguing and enjoyable read with some great spy thriller elements to it.

Berlin, 1985. The crushing stalemate of the Cold War continues as the East and the West engage in their usual espionage games. The most valuable piece on the board is an apparent Stasi source embedded deep within the CIA, providing invaluable information to the East Germany intelligence agency. However, the espionage balance is about to tip once again, when a young American embassy worker is handed a note in mysterious circumstances, apparently from a high-ranking member of the Stasi who wishes to defect to the West with a trove of information.

Unwilling to trust the CIA team in West Berlin, the traitor requests that a new face journey to East Berlin to discuss his upcoming defection. Forced to look outside the box of their usual operatives, the CIA decide to send Jack Ryan to make contact. Accompanied by a talented agent and shadowed by a deadly CIA killer, Ryan begins the dangerous journey to East Berlin to determine the legitimacy of their new source. However, there are few places more dangerous for a CIA agent like Ryan than East Berlin, and he soon finds himself surrounded by tricky foreign agents, deadly assassins and desperate informers, all of whom pose a dire risk to Ryan and his mission.

However, the plan gets even more complicated when an experimental US military aircraft crashes down in the Nevada desert, right in front of an undercover Stasi agent. Securing a vital piece of military hardware, the Stasi agent flees across America, aiming for an extraction by his masters while the FBI, Air Force and local police hunt for him. Desperately needing information on the Stasi agent in America before it is too late, Ryan must work hard to bring the defector to their side and find out where the fugitive is going. But with the KGB, Stasi, and the CIA traitor moving in for the kill, can Ryan escape East Berlin with the information he needs, or will the stolen technology allow the East to once again heat up the Cold War?

Red Winter was an excellent and highly exciting spy thriller novel that takes readers back to the classic Tom Clancy setting of Cold War Europe. Marc Cameron has produced a very entertaining and compelling read here, and I was swiftly sucked into the awesome story. The narrative itself has a lot of moving parts to it as Cameron focuses on several closely related storylines or character arcs at the same time. While much of the focus is on Ryan and his comrades as they attempt to infiltrate East Berlin and make contact with the defector, you also get familiar with several other great characters in the vicinity. This included the CIA mole, an East German singer who is being abused by a Stasi agent, members of the various spy agencies working on both sides of the Wall, and a deadly American operative who is shadowing Ryan to keep him alive. The book also shows the hunt for the fugitive Stasi agent in America, who is attempting to flee with the stolen military equipment. This American part of the book is further split between different perspectives, with the reader seeing events from the eyes of both the Stasi operative and the FBI agent hunting them.

These diverse storylines come together extremely well, and I really liked the interplay of different characters and plot lines in the second half of the book. There are some great storylines going on throughout the plot, with my personal favourite being the compelling fugitive scenes in America. The sequences set in Germany are also very intriguing, especially as Cameron provides some excellent descriptions of tradecraft and the various counterplays by the spies, as both sides battle it out for espionage supremacy. I really appreciated the dark dive into life within East Germany during this period, and the compelling looks at several East German characters who are attempting to survive added some intensity to the book. There is also an excellent look at the traitor with the CIA and their complex position and their reasons for betraying their country are an excellent part of the plot. While the first half of the book is pretty intense, everything kicks up a notch once Ryan and his colleagues arrive in East Germany. There are a ton of destructive and high-impact action sequences here which really get the blood pumping and keep the story going at a very fast pace. I deeply enjoyed the cool action sequences, especially as Cameron does a great job of writing them realistically, showcasing the talent of the professionals and Ryan’s lack of fighting ability. There are a few good twists towards the end and Cameron keeps the conclusion hopeful, but dark, highlighting that there are very few heroes in the Cold War. Red Winter was an amazing and very fun spy thriller, and I loved how this compelling narrative came together.

I also had a lot of fun coming into to this series as a Tom Clancy newbie. My only experience with Tom Clancy and the Jack Ryan books comes from some of the film adaptations, such as The Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games. However, I found that this was more than enough to enjoy Red Winter, and my lack of any real knowledge of Tom Clancy’s original books didn’t really hamper me at all. While I am sure that I missed out on a bunch of clever throwbacks, Cameron did a great job of reintroducing all the key characters so that new readers can follow their storylines. There are multiple references to some of the previous events that occurred canonically before the events of Red Winter, but none of them have any major impacts on the story, and I felt that any thriller fan could dive in here with a minimal amount of knowledge and still enjoy the fantastic story within. Red Winter also apparently serves as a bridging novel between The Hunt for Red October and The Cardinal of the Kremlin, with Ryan meeting several of the supporting characters from The Cardinal of the Kremlin in advance here. I felt that this was a very clever inclusion by Cameron, and fans of Clancy’s original work are going to love seeing some of the intriguing hints of the events that are to come. This also ends up being the first canonical time that recurring character John Clark sees Jack Ryan, having travelled to Berlin to help him, although Cameron uses circumstance and training to make sure they don’t actually talk. Personally, I thought this was a great introduction to the wider world of Clancy’s writings, and I will have to try and read some of his earlier works when I get a chance.

Overall, I had a wonderful time reading Red Winter and I really enjoyed Marc Cameron’s latest addition to Tom Clancy’s spy universe. Cleverly adding to the well-established Jack Ryan series, Red Winter features some awesome spy action while perfectly showing off the dangers of Berlin during the Cold War for all spies and government agents. Fast-paced, action-packed, and loaded with some classic Tom Clancy moments, Red Winter was an intriguing and captivating novel that will appeal to a wide range of readers.

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The Chase Cover

Publisher: Bantam Press (Trade Paperback – 30 March 2021)

Series: Standalone

Length: 449 pages

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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Australian thriller author Candice Fox returns with another fast-paced and intriguing thriller novel, this time utilising an extremely fun prison break premise to create The Chase, a compelling and addictive read.

Candice Fox is a bestselling Australian author who debuted in 2014 with Hades, the first novel in her Archer & Bennett trilogy, a fantastic Australian crime series that followed two very damaged detectives. She then followed that up with her Crimson Lake trilogy, as well as collaborating on the Detective Harriet Blue series with James Patterson. Since then Fox, has written a couple of standalone crime fiction novels set in America, including the 2020 release Gathering Dark, which is the only previous novel of Fox’s that I have read and which proved to be a fun and fantastic book. As a result, I was interested in reading more of Fox’s work, especially after I saw what kind of story her new novel would feature.

Synopsis:

When more than 600 of the world’s most violent human beings pour out from Pronghorn Correctional Facility into the Nevada Desert, the biggest manhunt in US history begins.

But for John Kradle, this is his one chance to prove his innocence, five years after the murder of his wife and child.

He just needs to stay one step ahead of the teams of law enforcement officers he knows will be chasing the escapees down.

Death Row Supervisor turned fugitive-hunter Celine Osbourne is single-minded in her mission to catch Kradle. She has very personal reasons for hating him – and she knows exactly where he’s heading . . .

I am sure that I was not the only person drawn in by The Chase’s cool plot synopsis, I mean, 600 convicts escaping from prison at the same time, who can resist that? I really enjoyed this book’s awesome story and I ended up finishing the entirety of The Chase in just over a day. This was mainly because The Chase had such a strong and captivating start to it, with someone using deadly blackmail to instigate a mass breakout as cover to free one unknown prisoner. This was one of the more awesome starts to a novel that I have seen, and I really loved the initial moments of this story, with the prisoners all heading off in various directions, including protagonist John Kradle, while other protagonist Celine Osbourne is left in shambles with all her Death Row charges escaping.

Fox soon breaks this narrative up into several smaller stories; you follow Kradle as he makes his escape, you also see Osbourne dealing with the fallout of the escape, and there are short descriptions of some of the other escapees and the people that encounter them. The main two storylines surrounding Kradle and Osbourne continue in an awesome way towards the middle of the book. I had a great time seeing Kradle attempt to evade the police and overcome an insane killer who is tagging along with him, while also heading home to solve the murder of his wife and child. Osbourne’s story was also very compelling, as it details some of the initial hunts for the escaped fugitives, the investigation into who was responsible for the breakout, and the start of Osbourne’s obsessive hunt for Kradle. The various smaller stories of the other escapees prove to be fun interludes to the main narratives, and Fox also includes key flashbacks to enrich the backstory of her central protagonists and showcase the reasons for emotional and combative history with each other.

Unfortunately, I found the last half of The Chase to be somewhat of a letdown after its outstanding beginning. Kradle’s hunt for his family’s killer soon becomes one of the least interesting parts of the entire book, especially as it has no connection with the wider breakout. His investigation is also loaded with way too many coincidences, unusually helpful witnesses, and strange motivations. The eventual reveal of the killer was honestly pretty weak, and Kradle’s entire storyline only concludes satisfactorily due to a serendipitous appearance from a supporting character. I was also not amazingly impressed with the identity of the person behind the prison escape, and I think that Fox missed a few opportunities, such as maybe tying Kradle’s personal investigation into a larger conspiracy. Still, there were some fantastic highlights in this second half of the book, including Osbourne’s gradually changing relationship with Kradle, the action-packed conclusion to Osbourne’s hunt for the organisers of the prison break, as well as the extended and entertaining storyline of one escapee who managed to make the most of their situation. While I would have loved a couple more extended storylines about some other outrageous inmates, I think that this was an overall good narrative, and I did have a lot of fun getting to the end.

I did really enjoy several of the characters featured in this fantastic novel. The most prominent of these is John Kradle, the Death Row inmate accused of killing his wife and son. Kradle is a likeable character, and you are quickly drawn into his desperate hunt for the person who framed him. Fox makes great use of several flashback sequences to explore Kradle’s past, which paints an intriguing picture of a former recluse who eventually finds love and ends up raising a son by himself. The reader does a feel a lot of sympathy for this unusual character, and he proves to be a fun protagonist to follow. The other major character in The Chase is the supervising prison guard of Pronghom Correctional Facility’s Death Row, Celine Osbourne. Osbourne is a strong and independent character who becomes obsessed with hunting Kradle and dragging him back to Death Row. I really enjoyed Osbourne as a character, especially as Fox comes up with a very traumatic and clever backstory for her that perfectly explains her obsession. Both lead characters serve as perfect focuses for The Chase’s narrative, and I had a great time seeing how their arcs unfolded, even if one was a little weaker than the other.

Fox also made use of several great side characters throughout The Chase. My favourite is probably street hustler Walter Keeper, better known as Keeps, the one inmate at Pronghom who did not escape, as he was due to be released. Keeps is dragged into Osbourne’s hunt for Kradle somewhat against his will due to his knowledge and intelligence. Keeps serves as a good supporting act to Osbourne for much of the book, although his character arc goes in some very entertaining and ironic directions as the narrative progresses. I also quite enjoyed tough-as-nails, no-nonsense, US Marshal Trinity Parker, who leads the manhunt. Parker is a very entertaining character who serves as a perfect foil to Osbourne’s obsessions, mainly due to her absolute refusal to take any BS from her. While I do think that Parker was a little over-the-top at times, she was still a fun addition to the cast. The final character I want to talk about is one of the escapees, Old Axe. Axe is a geriatric inmate who escapes from Pronghom on a whim and slowly makes his way to freedom. I quite enjoyed the various sequences that highlighted Axe’s escape efforts, even if they were tinged with a sinister edge, but his arc was one of the more distinctive parts of the book. All these characters were great, and I was really impressed that Fox was able to introduce them, build up their backstory and also provide satisfying conclusions for all of them in just one novel.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Chase and I felt that Candice Fox wrote a very entertaining and compelling narrative. While this book did have its flaws, I had a fantastic time getting through it and readers will find it very hard to put this exciting novel down. This was an awesome and addictive thriller, and I cannot wait to see what this amazing Australian author comes up with next.