Red Rabbit
by Tom Clancy
Putnam/$28.95
It wasn't long ago that Tom Clancy's work was considered eerily prescient, at least in a not-so-distant-future sense of time. His novels have foreshadowed the end of the Cold War, the rising militarism of China, even the threat of nuclear terrorism. In fact, the plot of the movie based on Clancy's The Sum of All Fears was rewritten post-9/11 because it was considered too realistic.
Unfortunately, Tom Clancy now appears as unable to make sense of the New World Order as any of the Desert Storm holdovers holding sway in the Bush White House.
Clancy's previous two efforts, Rainbow Six and The Bear and The Dragon, were irrelevant, John Forsyth knock-offs that read like screenplays for TBS "movies for guys who like movies." Rainbow Six's formulaic narrative was so outdated as to involve an imprisoned Carlos the Jackal(!) as one of the bad guys. No wonder Harrison Ford quit the film franchise.
Apparently unable to glean the future anymore, Clancy reaches into the past for the framework of his latest work, the pedantically titled Red Rabbit (this coming from the author of such bold titles as The Hunt for Red October).
Backstorying Mehmet Ali Agca's (real-life) failed attempt on the life of Pope John II in 1981, Clancy relies on many of his familiar players, such as Jack Ryan and Admiral James Greer. However, they are only supporting characters to CIA agents Ed and Mary Pat Foley, an uninteresting husband-and-wife team based in Moscow. It's their mission to extract a KGB communications officer with knowledge of the Soviet Union's involvement in the assassination plot. Evidently, the Russians aren't pleased with "that priest in Rome" stirring up trouble in his native Poland.
Obviously, the plot to kill the Pope failed. Still, this story could have been exciting if it weren't for Clancy's laborious recounting of each character's rather simple daily life. He spends page after page describing how bleak the USSR was under communism. Also disappointing is the absence of the enthralling technical detail that has been the hallmark of Clancy's past work.
With poor choices for subject matter and character focus, as well as horribly pedestrian dialogue, perhaps the only thing worse than reading Red Rabbit may be having to stand all day in a Russian bread line.
—Peter Schorsch
This article appears in Oct 2-8, 2002.