The Hunt for Red October

A Soviet submarine captain takes the navy’s newest ballistic-missile boat west intending to defect with it, and both fleets spend the novel trying to find him first. It is the book that introduced Jack Ryan and, more consequentially for the genre, established the procedural techno-thriller — long stretches of the pleasure are in the machinery and the chain of command working correctly.

Its publisher is part of why it reads that way: the Naval Institute Press had never published fiction before, and the manuscript came from an insurance agent with no service record and a great deal of reading.

Context: Tom Clancy (1947-2013) wrote The Hunt for Red October while working as an insurance agent in Maryland. The novel was reported to have been read and praised by President Reagan, which is generally credited with its move to the bestseller lists.

Connections

• Tom Clancy — the author.
• War — the Cold War standoff the plot runs inside.
• Literature