Book Review – Tom Clancy’s “Red Rabbit”
Last night I finished reading Tom Clancy‘s Red Rabbit, the third book chronologically in the Jack Ryan series of books and a direct sequel to Patriot Games.
Although Red Rabbit takes place in 1982 and between the events in Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October, the book itself was published much later in 2002. This later knowledge of real world events in the early 1980s becomes quite evident in Red Rabbit.
Tom Clancy — Red Rabbit
Red Rabbit begins in 1982 with Jack Ryan moving to London, England along with his wife, Cathy, and their two children. Jack had recently been assigned as a CIA officer to work in their London office and to continue gaining experience. Meanwhile, CIA officers Ed and Mary Pat Foley are also relocated overseas, but they are stationed to an American compound in Moscow, Russia. The Foleys are Americans and they live with Americans and other allies in a guarded compound within the city. Of course, everything inside of their apartment is bugged and listened to by the KGB, and KGB agents are keeping a constant watch on the movements and actions of the Foleys and other outsiders.
The book’s story is set in motion when it’s quickly learned that the Pope (assumed to be Pope John Paul II though his name is never mentioned) is threatening to leave his position at the Vatican and to return to his home country of Poland. Remember that Poland was a satellite state of the Soviet Union until 1989. The citizens of Poland have becoming restless with the Soviets, and it’s believed that if the Pope returns to Poland then the people will listen to him and eventually overthrow their socialist government.
When the Russians learn of the Pope’s letter of intent, Yuriy Vladimirovich Andropov, a KGB agent and the Chairman of the Committee for State Security, hatches a secret plot to assassinate the Pope to prevent him from returning to Poland. In addition to preventing the people of Poland from overthrowing their government and setting off a chain of events that would destabilize eastern Europe and weaken the Soviet Union, Andropov views the assassination as his ticket towards a higher position within the KGB. The only catch is that it cannot look like the assassination was carried out by the Soviets. If it was, then the political and social backlash against the Soviets would be disastrous.
Andropov sends a series of coded messages to the KGB agents stationed in Rome, Italy, and he quickly learns that although an assassination of the Pope is unfavorable, it’s still capable of being carried out. Knowing this, Andropov creates a plan of using a hired assassin from Bulgaria to direct the assassination of the Pope. The plan calls for a Muslim gunman from Turkey to use a pistol to shoot and kill the Pope when he meets with the public on a Wednesday. The Bulgarian assassin is to then use a silenced pistol to shoot and kill the gunman. He’ll then slip away in the panic and the authorities will be left with the dead body of a radical with no connection to the Soviets.
KGB officer Oleg Ivanovich Zaitzev is working in the communication center in Moscow when he sees Andropov’s coded messages regarding the Pope. Zaitzev quickly realizes that Andropov intends on killing the Pope, somebody that Zaitzev sees as an innocent person. It’s not like the Pope is a military leader or the dictator of a country. He’s the leader of the Catholic Church and would never harm a single person. Risking his life and the lives of his wife and young daughter, Zaitzev discretely makes contact with Ed Foley by slipping messages into his pocket on the subway. He reveals that he’s willing to defect to the U.S. and reveal very important and time-critical information about the Soviets.
Ed Foley receives the messages, and he and his wife work with the CIA and Zaitzev to learn more information. Believing that Zaitzev is real, the Foleys create a plan to smuggle Zaitzev and his wife and daughter out of the Soviet Union. To do so requires a trip to Hungary and three deceased people that were recently killed in fires. The CIA designates Zaitzev as the code word RABBIT.
The extraction plan calls for Oleg Zaitzev to officially take a vacation from his work. He tells his supervisor that he would like to take his family on a trip to Hungary for some relaxation, shopping, and to take the family to an orchestra. This is easily arranged by the KGB and Zaitzev is asked to pick up some western products for his co-workers while he’s in Hungary. It’s well known that western goods are frequently smuggled into Hungary and it’s possible for Soviets to purchase them there. While in Hungary, the Zaitzevs will be contacted by CIA agents and then smuggled out of the country.
Jack Ryan is sent to Hungary to observe the operation. When he arrives there, he acts as a liaison and helps Oleg Zaitzev and his family through the extraction process. After the orchestra concert, the Zaitzevs are quietly removed from their hotel room and a small team of agents places the three dead bodies in the room. The room is then set on fire. When the Soviets would later examine the bodies, it would look like an accidental hotel fire claimed all three lives.
A car takes Jack Ryan and the Zaitzevs to the Hungary / Yugoslavia border where a different vehicle smuggles them into Yugoslavia. The gang is then taken to an airport where a waiting airliner flies them directly to London, England. The whole smuggling plan goes off without a hitch. After Oleg Zaitzev and his family are safely in England, he tells the intelligence officers about the imminent plot to assassinate the Pope. Zaitzev also gives more detailed information about Soviet agents in both England and the U.S., and how the American communication systems have been broken by the Soviets.
The information about the assassination is bumped up the chain of command, and it’s quickly determined that they have to act on it to save the life of the Pope. Jack Ryan is sent to Rome, Italy to help locate and stop the assassin from Bulgaria. It turns out that this same Bulgarian assassin is wanted for a murder that took place in England years ago.
When Wednesday rolls around, Jack Ryan and the other intelligence agents are in place in the Vatican. The Bulgarian is located, but the agents are surprised when a different gunman shoots and seriously wounds the Pope. Ryan prevents the Bulgarian from killing the gunmen, and both assassins are taken into custody. At the end of the book it’s suggested that the British team killed the Bulgarian and then dumped his body, making him pose as a tourist who had a heart attack and died.
Red Rabbit ends with the Pope survives the assassination attempt. The CIA also approves of Jack Ryan moving up in the rankings and being introduced to more complicated assignments.
FINAL THOUGHTS
So is Tom Clancy’s Red Rabbit a good book?
Not really.
At 618 pages for the hardback version of the book, Red Rabbit is a very lengthy reading experience that adds little if anything to the overall story of the Jack Ryan universe. It literally takes about two hundred pages of reading before you start to encounter anything interesting. The book also seems to repeat the same message over and over
In Red Rabbit, Jack Ryan himself isn’t much of a factor in this story until the last third of the book. Otherwise, the main characters are Ed and Mary Pat Foley along with Oleg Zaitzev. Yuriy Andropov is also a major character, but he’s somewhat lost in the story in the second half of the book.
Another problem with Red Rabbit is that it was written ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s too convenient that when the characters are discussing the problems with the Soviets and how to bring down their country, they all seemed to have the correct answers. That would have been more impressive if this book was actually written during that time period when the Soviets were at the peak of their power.
But it wasn’t.
Red Rabbit was written years later when the downfall of the Soviet Union was widely published. So for the characters to be set in 1982 and accurately analyzing how to bring down the Soviets, that just made for boring storytelling. Unfortunately, that’s how many parts of Red Rabbit was written. Did we get to read about anything happening in Poland and just how much of a difference it would make with the Pope returning to his home country? Nope. Most of the book is set in Moscow and we get to read over and over again about how it was such a lousy place to live.
To me, it seems like Red Rabbit would have been a much better story if it was severely compressed into about two hundred pages and then made into a sub-plot of one of the other novels, such as The Hunt for Red October or The Cardinal of the Kremlin. The fact that Red Rabbit was stretched into an astonishing 618 pages is just too overbearing, especially since most of the subject material is repetitive and proven accurate because of history’s knowledge of the downfall of the Soviet Union. One has to wonder what Clancy was thinking when he tried to make a major story out of such a small plot.
As far as the assassination plot against the Pope, it’s too obvious that Clancy was basing this on the real shooting of Pope John Paul II that took place in 1981. Clancy changed a few minor details here and there, but most of the events around the real shooting are represented in the book. Again, since we already knew these events from history, it wasn’t a surprise when the book had basically the same outcome as real life. In other words, it was boring.
Thankfully, Red Rabbit primarily focuses on the extraction of Oleg Zaitzev’s family from the USSR. Only a small part of the book involves the assassination attempt on the Pope as well as its outcome.
Red Rabbit was a lengthy book that included repetitive material as well as subject matter straight from history books. There’s little suspense, little action, and very little satisfaction when reaching the end of the story. Some fans of Tom Clancy might find some worthwhile entertainment here, but that’s definitely a minority. The rest of the fans will most likely be disappointed with the boring and lackluster story and its predictable outcome.
