The Red Horseman (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author) "TOAD TARKINGTON FIRST NOTICED HER DURING THE INtermission after the first act..." (more)
Key Phrases: binary poison, fallout zone, hot suits, Jake Grafton, Jack Yocke, Herb Tenney (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Coonts's latest Jake Grafton ( Under Siege ) espionage thriller takes on the most critical issues in global politics and turns them into first-rate adventure fiction. Now a rear admiral and deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Grafton learns from a Mossad hitwoman that Jewish media kingpin Nigel Keren was the victim of a complicated poisoning engineered by the CIA. Grafton and "Toad" Tarkington, his trusted sidekick, are threatened with similar poisoning and, just as they are dispatched to Moscow to oversee the dismantling of the Russian nuclear arsenal, they discover bugs in the DIA offices. Thus begins a dizzyingly complex adventure of apocalyptic importance, staged on three continents, filled with convincingly fictionalized portraiture (there are characters based on Robert Maxwell and Colin Powell; Saddam Hussein himself plays a pivotal role). The issues Coonts confronts--the frighteningly unprotected and undermaintained nuclear devices in the former Soviet Union; factionalism in the U.S. intelligence community; unrest in the Middle East--make this one of the most compelling post- glasnost thrillers to date. BOMC selection; major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Rear Admiral Jake Grafton, aviator-hero of Coonts's Under Siege (1990), etc., now saves the world from potential Armageddon- -and gets to meet Boris Yeltsin and Saddam Hussein in the bargain. The nearly nonstop action begins when an Israeli spy gives Jake's assistant Toad Tarkington a photo that leads Jake and Toad to suspect a CIA cabal at work in numerous evil deeds, including the murder of publishing magnate Nigel Keren (read: Robert Maxwell) by way of ``binary'' poison--poison that, because of the duo's sleuthing, may next be used on them. But despite the threat, Jake and Toad soldier on with their next assignment: to monitor the dismantling of Soviet nuclear missiles. The pair's sojourn in Russia allows Coonts to indulge in his usual soapboxing (``In case you haven't noticed,'' says Jake, ``Russia is a third-world shithole'') even as Jake and Toad meet with beetle-browed generals and try to avoid being poisoned by the CIA cabal. Meanwhile, an anti-Yeltsin KGB faction blows up a Russian nuclear-weapons site, causing a meltdown that may kill a million (```Another million,' Jake Grafton roared savagely. `God in heaven, when will it ever stop?'''). As Russia erupts in panic, Jake learns that the meltdown covered up the theft from the site of several warheads that were then sold to Saddam Hussein. After Jake confers with Yeltsin, the admiral and Toad's pilot-wife take to the skies to bomb the reactor's remaining missiles, shooting down renegade KGB jets in the process. Jake then exposes the CIA cabal and retrieves the stolen warheads through a raid on Iraq--where both the outlaw KGB leader and Saddam himself make a big mistake by getting in Jake's way. Coonts's plots are getting as overcomplicated as Tom Clancy's, but his flying-and-fighting scenes are as exciting as ever. Chalk up another red, white, and blue ace for the author and his jet- jockeys. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (June 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671748882
• ISBN-13: 978-0671748883
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #235,047 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 5 in The Jake Grafton Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stephen Coonts flying high at a low altitude, December 30, 2004

By	Rennie Petersen (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The high point of "The Red Horseman" is the aerial dogfight between Jake Grafton (flying a Russian Su-25 "Frogfoot") and four Russian Su-27 "Flankers", with most of the action taking place below 200 ft. altitude! Stephen Coonts is very good at writing about this kind of combat, and you really feel that you're right there in the cockpit with Jake.

This book is the fifth or sixth (depending on how you number them) book in the Jake Grafton series. By now Stephen Coonts had established himself as a worthy competitor to Tom Clancy, and in my opinion his books are better than Clancy's. In particular, the characters in a Stephen Coonts book are real people, and people you enjoy learning more and more about.

In the first two-thirds of "The Red Horseman" the story unfolds slowly, but satisfactorily, as an international political thriller. Jake, now a Rear Admiral in the American Defense Intelligence Agency, is sent to Moscow to help monitor the Russian dismantling of their nuclear warheads. The CIA is also involved, but not in the way we would expect, and of course some warheads go missing.

The last third of the book becomes a techno-thriller. The hunt is on to retrieve the missing warheads and to ensure that no more will be stolen. In addition to the great dogfight mentioned above there is a very detailed description of how a major military operation to secure an enemy airfield would be done nowadays.

I found this last section of the book to be the most interesting and exciting part. The whole thing is rather unrealistic, but the reader is willing to ignore that because it's so exciting. Unfortunately, I thought that the ending was a bit too far out, and this is part of the reason for the lack of the fifth star.

Also on the negative side, I found Stephen Coonts opinion of post-glasnost Russia overly derogatory. He has his characters saying "nothing works here" and "Russia is on its way to the stone age" so many times it becomes silly. This is especially true with the hindsight we have now that Russia did survive the Yeltsin era and is slowly but surely becoming a developed country by western standards.

A very interesting sub-plot in "The Red Horseman" involves the death of a British newspaper mogul named Nigel Keren. Stephen Coonts has very clearly modeled Nigel Keren on the real-life Robert Maxwell. Even their dates of death are identical!

In conclusion, a very good techno-thriller, up to the usual Stephen Coonts standards. If you like military techno-thrillers with lots of political skullduggery, then this is for you.

Rennie Petersen

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but poorly written, February 20, 2004

By	"leomontg" (Bremerton, WA USA) - See all my reviews

I can't believe I made it through the book, this is the first book in a long time that I have been tempted to drop in the middle. The plot is very interesting and at times kept my attention. It also got more and more improbable as the plot grinded its gears through the book. Jake Grafton is apparently some kind of god and can do anything and go anywhere apparently without authority from anyone else but himself. The book would have been alright if these were its only flaws, after all it is a novel and I expected to put my disbelief on hold while I read (not everyone can write like Clancy).

The major problem with the book is the writing. All the characters are extremely one dimensional except maybe Jack Yocke. The dialogue is awfully written and can't Coonts think of any other word for helicopter besides "machine"!? There were numerous plot holes, but I will concede that Coonts made an effort to fix them though somewhat lamely.

This book may be OK for people who have read the other books in the series and have already gotten used to the characters, but if this is going to be the only Coonts book you read, steer clear because it could be your last.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Implausible thriller, July 12, 2001

By	Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

In "The Red Horsemen", Admiral Jake Grafton travels to post-Soviet Russia to monitor the dismantling of that country's nuclear arsenal. Stephen Coonts, Grafton's creator, brews up a tale of crooked Russians, homocidal CIA agents and black market nukes being sold amid the disintegration of Russia. Unfortunately, the story bogs down quickly when Grafton gets to Russia - mostly because the plot becomes overly complicated, but also due to the sheer implausibility that Coonts inserts into the story - like Grafton's single-handed destruction of a formation of highly agile Su-27 fighters while himslef flying only a hoggish Su-25; the novel's climax has the hero meet Saddam Hussein face-to-face and exact a measure of justice in an ending that seems incredibly pat for Coonts. Even that ending would seem worse had it not capped off a book full of plot twists that don't come together. Coonts' original "Flight of the Intruder" was a great book because it resisted the temptation to become the sort of technothriller that "Horseman" is. Instead, take out "Cuba" in which Coonts returns to form.