Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24581 in Books
• Published on: 1989-11-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Tom Clancy's cutting-edge research takes readers inside Soviet and American attempts to develop a Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). The Soviets have begun successful tests of their system, located near the border of Afghanistan. Americans race to implement their own system, Tea Clipper, so as to maintain strategic parity.

Cardinal of the Kremlin, however, is more about the shifting allegiances of the intelligence community and the unstable world of late 1980s U.S.-Soviet relations than it is about military technology. Colonel Mikhail Filitov is the Cardinal, the CIA's ear in the Kremlin and a steady source of the latest Soviet secrets. Passing microfilm through a chain of agents that begins in a Turkish bath, the Cardinal exposes a double agent in the American SDI program. Unfortunately, the KGB also knows that they have a mole in their midst. In tightly crafted narrative that rapidly cuts from the Kremlin to Afghanistan to Washington, D.C., the Americans rush to pull Filitov and his associates out before his cover is blown. Jack Ryan returns as the moral centre in a world often dominated by egos and politicking, and John Clark, ex-Navy SEAL and current CIA agent makes his first appearance in a Clancy novel (though his early life is chronicled in Without Remorse).

Clancy hits his stride in this outing, meshing a plot that earns the name "thriller" with bang-on depictions of SDI systems and a varied and interesting cast of characters. Moving beyond black-and-white depictions of the "evil empire", he delves into the altogether greyer world where political ideals meet reality. --Patrick O'Kelley

Synopsis
Another thriller about international espionage by the author of "The Hunt for Red October", "Red Storm Rising" and "Patriot Games". The superpower arms negotiations appear to be making progress, but a US spy satellite reveals that the Soviets are building a massive laser-defence system.

Customer Reviews

Despite His Hydrocephalus Politics and Latest Duds, THIS IS CLANCY AT HIS BEST!
I do not like Tom Clancy. I despise his totalitarian amoral politics and I canNOT stand him slapping his readers with them in his latest oversized and underwritten duds.

However, Tom Clancy was once an EXCELLENT technothriller writer. He might not have invented the genre, yet he launched it into the stratosphere.

This is HIS BEST BOOK and it is actually very good.
The mid-80's Cold-War atmosphere, the paranoia, the double-agents, the clandestine methods and the hardware are all expertly presented.
Now, him being, well...Clancy there still are stereotypes and bigoted characters galore. Deciding to overcome this however, the reader can actually enjoy this one.

Do not judge CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN based on his deteriorated career.

Amazing continuation of the brilliant "Hunt for Red October"
This is in my modest opinion the second best book by Tom Clancy, bested only by the "Hunt for Red October". This incredibly courageous technothriller is centered around two topics: a Soviet officer who is spying for Americans since the 60s and a new, powerful weapon, developped by USSR - a laser gun able to destroy satelites. This second topic is partly inspired by the true events - such an installation, destined to blind (not destroy) US satelites, was really build in the last years in USSR close to Duchanbe in todays Tadjikistan, but never tried on an American target.
As one of the previous reviewers pointed, this is a very pro-US book, and that is precisely the reason I call it courageous: most spy books usually try not to design one of the blocks (East or West) as being on the good side and another on the bad side. Which is not true in my modest opinion, because let's face it - during the Cold War there was one alliance made of democracies and it faced a totalitarian empire and its unwilling satelites. That alone shows which side was right and which one was wrong. And this book, as its predecessor, takes exactly this position.
The plot itself is also very daring - I do not want to give any spoilers, but towards the end my jaw dropped. Three times in a row. I was like "Oh my God, he dared to write THIS?" And I think that even now, 16 years after the end of Cold War, this books still packs an impressive power to surprise and shock you. And it is also a really good read. I recommend it warmly, as the second best technothriller ever, a perfect second part of the amazing "Hunt for Red October".

A cold war novel holding up well today
I recently read "Cardinal of the Kremlin" for a second time, having first enjoyed it about 10 years ago. I was pleased to find that it was still a good read. Unlike some of Clancy's other novels, the story gets going almost immediately and the characters are all quite believable. There are some occasional moments of implausibility in the plot, but nothing too serious.

Despite being written and set in the time of the cold war, the book holds up well today. Clancy's opinions about the status of the Soviet economy, which must have been largely speculative when he wrote them in the mid 1980s, have been shown by events to be largely accurate. I feel the Russians are portrayed quite sympathetically for the most part, even if the Americans always seem to get the upper hand.

It is thought provoking to read Clancy's descriptions of the Mujahadin warriors in Afghanistan and their motives for fighting the Soviets. Twenty years later, another generation of Mujahadin warriers are now fighting western troops in Afghanistan.

Altogether a very good novel, especially for those with a penchant for cold war stories.