Marc Cameron is a retired Deputy Chief United States Marshall. He has the experience to write spy thrillers.. He has taken over the authorship of the Tom Clancy series for the Clancy Estate. The series protagonist is Jack Ryan. In Red Winter, Jack, a former marine and CIA analyst, is in enemy territory – East Germany. The dreaded Stasi is everywhere. These 1985 Cold War spies battle with both the CIA and the KBG. MI6 is a lesser player but causes yet more confusion for the spies.
Who is the enemy in East Germany? The Russians? The Americans? The East Germans themselves? When the new CIA recruit from the great plains of America lands in West Berlin, the scene is set for her misadventures. Being distrusted by all sides, she is headed for trouble.
The parallel story is set in the Nevada desert where the U.S. test site for a F-117s is located. The material coating of the new secret F-117 makes the plane impossible to detect by radar. The Russian and Stasi spies want a piece of that material coating. They follow the test flights in the Nevada desert and eventually get a chip of the material when the test plane crashes. They rush up the mountainside and are the first on the scene.
There is a handy map of the train route showing how the plane thieves escape through Nevada and Utah. There is also a useful map of East and West Berlin with clear depiction of the Berlin Wall.
The 1985 setting brings back memories of the kilometre-long Russian tunnel build under Berlin, the miscommunications, dead drops and a mysterious thirteenth century Franciscan monastery – all described in Red Winter. There are the usual vicious murders, fear of double spies, wild chases and romantic intrigues that are in the Jake Ryan series.
Can our hero Jack foil the enemy plans before the brutal Cold War turns into a red winter – a nuclear war? You can guess the answer but the twists and turns in the trajectory keeps us reading. The best part is when an innocent woman, abused and humiliated by an evil spy, gets her deserved revenge.
Red Winter, Published 13 December 2022, by Hachette Australia
Paperback $33
ISBN: 978 1408 828 812