Marc Cameron. Tom Clancy: Red Winter. Putnam, 2023.

We had written before that Marc Cameron’s stories from the Tom Clancy estate may be the closest to what Clancy himself might have written.

Red Winter is not a Jack Ryan, Jr., tale. This features the original Jack Ryan, Sr., CIA analyst and independent investor, long before he becomes President. Jack is thirty-four in November 1985 when this is set. Yes, technically November is not winter, but this is walled-off Berlin back when people were worrying about a new ice age rather than global warming. It is cold and snowy. This may be an exercise in nostalgia, but it works.

This is set after the Red October incident and the adventures with the Royal Family in Patriot Games, so Ryan has gotten the attention of Admiral Greer of the CIA. Still, he is not really the main character here. Ryan is working with and under Mary Pat Foley. Mary Pat would be a regular figure in many of the Jack Ryan novels. Her experience teaches Ryan and readers about espionage.

There are two parallel plots in the story. Since this is 1985, the United States is experimenting with stealth aircraft. Rumors abound, and UFO fanatics camp our around an Air Force practice range in Nevada, also known as Area 51. Along with the UFOlogists is an East German spy who knows there is something else going on. When one of the prototype stealth planes crashes, the conspiracy theorists try to reach the site before the military authorities. So does the East German spy.

Most of the action, though, takes place in the divided Berlin. Without preaching, we can see the great difference between East and West, between Communism and Capitalism. Freedom is worth maintaining. Through a convoluted drama, we learn that an East German official wants to defect to the West. For most of the book, no one on either side has any idea who it is. Mary Pat and Jack are dispatched to Berlin, both West and East, to see what they can discover.

We meet a few Stasi (East German Secret Police) officers and a German couple who maintain a safe house in East Berlin. They spied for the Allies during World War II and have kept things going with the various NATO allies since.

We also learn a little more about John Clark, a Clancy regular. He has a very interesting role in this story. He is assigned simply to tail a couple of allied spies in East Berlin. Ryan, Foley, and none of the other allied principals know where he is or what he is doing. It is never simple, especially when international relations are involved.

Red Winter does make observations about government workers on both sides. Jack Ryan notes the following about some of his fellow workers:

Government service was a noble endeavor, but unfortunately there were far too many ruthless self-promoters who clawed their way up through the ranks. (124)

An East German character notes that government workers on their side fall into one of three categories: (1) the true believers who really think they are helping to create a Utopia, (2) people who are attracted to the power, and (3) people who would otherwise be criminals but can use their criminal bent legally working for the government.

There is a lot of action. Being about espionage, the action is more subtle than an overt war or crime story—though I would be lying if I wrote that no one dies. Who is the person who wants to defect? Is he or she genuine or is it some kind of setup? How does this connect to events in Nevada?

We are reminded that the Stasi got many if not most citizens to spy on one another. What can beautiful women do about their Stasi handlers? (Naturally, we mean handler in more than one sense.) What can a person do when his or her family or friends are threatened?

While perhaps not quite as ironic as Rainbow Six. there is a pleasing and ironic ending, and one that is fun to read and mosty unexpected. This throwback novel reminds us of why we liked Clancy in the first place. It also reminds us, as did a review in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, that Communism is amoral and evil. You can try to dress it up and say it is for the good of the people, but that is simply putting jewelry on a pig’s snout.