For now, I think I'll assign it to Fear the Drowning Deep, since that square has already been called.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2022, but I'm still not sure which square I want to use it for - either Fear the Drowning Deep, or Film at 11. I'm sort of tempted to re-read a few other Ryan books now. I'm thankful to Peregrinations for getting me thinking about this book again. Clancy was the undisputed master at blending exceptional realism and authenticity, intricate plotting, and razor-sharp suspense. Re-reading this ending was like experiencing it for the first time and it was tense. His first effort, The Hunt for Red October, sold briskly as a result of rave reviews, then catapulted onto the bestseller list after President Ronald Reagan pronounced it the perfect yarn. I'm generally pretty vitriolic about movie adaptations, especially when they significantly alter things, but full credit to the screenwriters I don't know that the book's ending would have worked as well on-screen, but the spirit of the thing was caught perfectly. Lauded by the Washington Post as breathlessly exciting, The Hunt for Red October remains a masterpiece of military fiction by one of the world’s most popular authors, a man whose shockingly realistic scenarios continue to hold us in thrall. Having gone so long between reads, and having seen the movie enough times in between, I had forgotten how much the movie deviates - especially at the end - from the book. Its story: the chase for a top secret Russian missile sub. True, bits of it are dated (the average American salary being 20k a year, or even more startling, the superiority of the CRAY-2 supercomputer, which cost tens of millions of dollars, was available only at NASA and a few military centers,, and had the same computing power of the first iPad.), but overall the action is fast, the writing intelligent, and the suspense top notch. It's every bit as good as I remember - even better, really, because this time around I didn't have any trouble keeping track of the boats and the subs. The story follows the intertwined adventures of Soviet submarine captain Marko Aleksandrovich. I haven't read this since soon after it came out in the late 80's, although I've seen the movies numerous times over the years. The Hunt for Red October is a novel written by Tom Clancy.

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy