I haven’t read this book since the mid-80s when my schoolmate and friend, Michael Hay suggested I might like it. I dug into it, and for awhile there, birthdays or Christmases would bring me the latest Tom Clancy hardcover.

I’ve been itching to kind of go back and see I still enjoy the stories, and the character of Jack Ryan. And I have to tell you, I quite enjoyed this one. Since the book came out, I’ve seen the 1990 film adaptation countless times. I know the music cues and the dialogue. So digging into it this time was a unique experience.

Clancy’s book is expansive, Weaving an international tale of intrigue and suspense as CIA analyst Jack Ryan gets himself caught up in a the hunt for a new Russian missile submarine, Red October. It has a drive that renders it virtually silent, and it’s captain, Marko Ramius, is intending to defect.

Clancy brings in a vast array of characters, shows and mentions others who will show up in later tales (Ritter and CARDINAL). There is intelligence gathering, tense submarine moments, and lots of military tech, talk, and moments. Not to mention some diplomacy and politics.

The film still has all the big moments in the book, but trims some of the other extraneous moments that fill out the world Clancy plunges us into. To be fair, Clancy’s writing is detail-oriented and all grounded in the real world and his expansive tale probably plays out as close to a real event as possible. The film compresses a lot of it, but all the big moments are there.

There are missing characters and ships, but it is all slimmed down in the film to tell the best version of the story possible in a two hour period.

The book takes its time. Not in a bad way. It lets the drama play out over the course of eighteen days. It takes aboard carriers, subs and ships of American, Russian, and England, and lets us serve with the men aboard.

Ryan isn’t quite as sharp in the book as he has to be in the film. He figures everything out in the film’s narrative. In the book, other characters figure things out, and work to get him info, even when he’s out in the middle of the ocean. The book demonstrates how intelligence gathering, spycraft, diplomacy all work, and sometimes don’t work as Ryan, Ramius, and the captain of the USS Dallas, Bart Mancuso work to make the plan work; and that plan is to allow Ramius and his officers defect, and to make the Russians think that the Red October has sunk or been destroyed.

It remains a solid, and entertaining book, and I may continue my time with Jack Ryan. I never did get through all of his literary adventures.