Red Skies

Commander T. C. Bogner #3

by R. Karl Largent

The cutting-edge Russian SU-39-Covert stealth bomber, with fighter capabilities years beyond anything the U.S. can produce, vanished while on a test run over the Gobi Desert. Half a world away, a dissident faction of the Chinese Red Army engineered an abduction of a top scientist, the one who developed SU-39, while he was visiting Washington. Now, Commander T.C. Bogner has his orders--retrieve the fighter and its designer within 72 hours--or else.

400 pages, Paperback

First published December 28, 1996

About the author

R. Karl Largent, a.k.a. Robin Karl or Simon Lawrence, is an author, lecturer, and columnist who teaches writing at Tri-State University. Before launching his writing career, he spent 30 years in industry, the last 17 as VP of Marketing for a Fortune 500 multinational. A former horse show judge and trainer of youth horses, he competed in SCCA road racing events, flew as a weather observer in the USAF, completed a tour of duty in the Arctic and served with the U.S. Weather Bureau.

R. Karl Largent is the author of over 600 columns. He has also authored nearly two dozen novels including the bestselling "Red" series. He has also written six non-fiction books as well as numerous articles for magazines, newspapers and other publications.

Reviews

[Jeff Dawson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title is a bit odd but after reading the book, it is referring to Red China and Russia and a rogue group of Chinese Communist attempting to steal the new Soviet SU-39 which apparently can outperform the US F-117. If it does, you never know about it.

The premise for the book was intriguing, but alas, that is where it stopped. Publishers Weekly made the comment "for Tom Clancy to step aside." I think not. The story could have really been good but the author made it a point to keep jumping back and forth with all of the "author generated" excitement. Mr. Largent keeps pushing the story instead of letting it develop on its own.

In short, rogue elements in China and Russia have ideas of grandeur. They plan on bringing down the main parties and inserting their own people in power to regain the hard line communist ideology. Along with that there is a defector in the US ranks who will do anything for money. Not a bad idea, just poorly executed.

Talking of executing, one of most glaring, ridiculous story lines occurs when two of the characters are seriously wounded. They put James Bond to shame on how they survive. It was completely unbelievable and kept dragging

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another entry in the T. C. Bogner series. This wasn't a great book, but was a good, entertaining book, if still somewhat predictable by the mid-way point. I've been reading these books in the sequence in which they were published.

I'm used to Government operatives being almost super-men, like Ludlum's Jason Bourne, Thor's Scot Harvath and Flynn's Mitch Rapp. T. C. Bogner is not a good operative by comparison. He misses signs that leads to betrayal, then gets beat up by everyone. I've seen little improvement in the skills of the character, and tire of him being sent on missions and only barely surviving the mission while the mission gets completed almost without any effort from him.

It would make sense if the character were younger and he was becoming a better, more adept operative in these early missions. But he seems to be an aging operative who doesn't take precautions or watch his back. For example, in this book he is being followed by two Russian operatives and he takes one out on a staircase, but forgets there were two of them and before he can do anything he gets knocked out. I don't understand how this guy is still alive, it doesn't make sense why the opposing operatives wouldn't just kill him.