BEFORE JONES, MANCUSO, RAMIUS, AND RYAN. Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October has a disgruntled Soviet skipper defect to the United States. Conditions in the Soviet Navy were worse than Mr Clancy knew. Peter Sasgen's Stalking the Red Bear makes use of information he obtained from retired Navy personnel, and possibly from former Soviet sailors. Book Review N^o. 25 gripes that the subtitle, The True Story of a U.S. Cold War Submarine's Covert Operations Against the Soviet Union, overpromises. Some details are disguised to protect sources, which might be expected. There aren't many covert operations in the story. Fast-attack shadows various live-fire exercises, takes hull pictures, avoids counter-detection. Maybe the fiction is more exciting. The appendices, however, which make use of declassified information from World War II, are more interesting than the main story. I may check out the story about the "safety control rod axe man," which U.S. nuclear submarines don't have, but which Soviet ones might have, as a last resort ...

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)