Customer Reviews

Cold Is the Sea (Bluejacket Books)

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I first read 'Cold is the sea' about ten years ago, and from that time I have become attached to life on a submarine. Edward Beach demonstrates and dramitizes the simple live or die choice of those who fight in a submarine. The book has become often read and the inspiration and bench mark by which I judge any exciting war novels.

Captain "Rich" Richardson, the navy hero of "Run Silent Run Deep" is back in action. Actually, reluctant inaction is more like it. A hero, with a row of medals to prove it, Richardson works tirelessly to return to sea. Marrying his sweetheart (ex-fiance of Jim Bledsoe, Richardson's rival killed in "Run Silent") and becoming a father has taken the sailor out of Richardson. After WWII, however, going to back to work means joining the most exclusive of the nation's services - the "Nuclear Navy". With a charachter - more than loosely based on Admiral Rickover - holding the keys to the nuclear navy, Richardson's combat history is more a liability than an asset, fixing Beach's hero firmly in the past, and not the atomic future. None of Richardson's training or experience prepares him for the cold-war intrigues that envelop him once he reports aboard his first SSN. while suspenseful and (likely) realistic, Richardson's depcition of submarine warfare seems little changed from that used to drive "Run Silent" and its sequel "Dust on the Sea", even though both were set in the pre-nuclear age, when subs spent most of their time on the surface, and the deeps seemed almost as mysterious to the subs as the were to the surface ships. Little of the silent claustrophobia of submarine-warfare comes across, and the scenes pf Richardson at work seem more reminescent of some cheesy WWII sub-thriller. As in previous Beach/Richardson novels, dialog drives the action. When charachters talk, it's often in long paragraphs that make the listeners seem like servile plebes.

This is another good book from Edward Beach. I remember when I read it that I couldn't put it down because I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. Again, a very well written book by someone who was actually there.

"Cold is the Sea" revisits "Rich" Richardson, the hero of Beach's earlier (and more well known) story of subs at war in the Pacific, "Run Silent, Run Deep". In "Cold", Richardson emerges from one war into another - the Cold War, and finds himself at odds with the Navy's recalcitrant head of nuclear-powerplant training. Richardson has a chest full of ribbons and medals, but glory counts for little in the deadly-serious ranks of the nuclear navy, and Rich's various honors mark his age rather than his merit.

The story dovetails with that of one of Rich's friends, now himself helming a nuclear sub in unfriendly Arctic waters. When the sub is attacked and crippled by a mystery boat prowling the same waters, it's Richardson to the rescue.

There are references to other books in the "Run Silent" franchise (although the only one I had read was "Dust on the Sea", the immediate sequel to "Run"), but even new readers in search of a good read on submarines should find themselves at home in this book. Though it was a pivotal time for submarine development, these years of the cold war get little shrift in the fiction department. "Cold" excels as much as Beach's other books, linking two eras of the Silent Service. By the time you hit the last page, you could find yourself shivering, as if you too had spent some time trapped under polar ice packs.