Tom Clancy: Red Winter

Set in 1985, bestseller Cameron’s winning sixth Jack Ryan novel (after 2021’s Chain of Command) opens in West Berlin, where newbie Foreign Service officer Ruby Keller, who’s having a snack at McDonald’s, gets caught up in a fracas that leaves her holding a floppy disc and a note from an unknown person who wants to defect to the West from East Berlin. Meanwhile, in the Nevada desert, East German Stasi agent Garit Richter witnesses the crash of an F-117 Nighthawk, an experimental stealth bomber. After killing two people, Richter steals a small chunk of the fuselage and goes on the run, headed back to his masters in East Germany. CIA analyst Jack is assigned the job of capturing Richter and overseeing the matter of the East Berlin defector. Cameron has fun with the period references, including cell phones the size of bricks, Farrah Fawcett posters, IBM Selectrics, and dot matrix printers. This return to earlier days opens the field to further adventures of the young Jack Ryan. Readers will eagerly await the next. Agent: Gina Panettieri, Talcott Notch Literary. (Dec.)