Deep Secrets: A Cold War Thriller

by Gerry Young

A Cold War Submarine Novel Set in 1975 during the Cold War, this novel is based on an actual project the US Navy was introducing. This project, known as Outlaw Shark, was designed to give US submarines the capability to effectively attack surface targets at much longer ranges than had ever been possible. The new generation of submarine-launched missiles would extend the attack range beyond the distance at which a submarine could positively identify and locate a target. Rick Halsted is a submarine officer with seven years of service. His ambition is to rise to command of a nuclear submarine, and he’s laid out a plan to achieve that goal. Hs plan is disrupted by orders cancelling his postgraduate school assignment. Instead, he finds himself drawn reluctantly into the naval intelligence community, and tasked with determining whether any civilian employees of a defense contractor are passing highly classified Outlaw Shark information to the Soviets. Posing as a new civilian recently separated from the Navy, Rick becomes an engineer working on the project from which the secrets may be leaking. He’s actually holding down two jobs – his engineering job and the counterintelligence task of finding the traitors. The Navy doesn’t know Rick’s real personal history. His background will play a major role in how he solves the espionage problem. Shortly after beginning this task, Rick finds himself falling in love with one of the potential traitors. His search – and his life – are complicated by his lover being one of the people he’s investigating. She joins in the effort to find the spies, even though Rick hasn’t eliminated her as a suspect. Rick is under constant pressure from his intelligence boss to treat her as a prime suspect. It doesn’t take long until a murder forces Rick to realize that someone’s playing for keeps in this game. As the romance becomes more serious, an old nemesis of Rick’s reappears in his life. Attempting to use this enemy as a tool to find the spies, Rick and his lover find themselves entwined in a life-threatening situation. Rick has to trick this wily adversary to save her life and to keep his career goals within reach. It comes down to a situation where either he or his enemy must die

395 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 14, 2015

Reviews

[Charles T Elston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely realistic and plausible story line

I have some personal and professional experience with the Harpoon missile system and peripheral association with Outlaw Shark. Gerry's writing style is easy to follow but almost to the "turnoff" level when he gets to tech details - much as he had some of his characters during the "training evolutions" aboard Los Angles. Overall I'd buy it again cause I really liked his "This is no shit sea story." He put his background to good use and wrote a very realistic spy novel that is entertaining and captivating. Keep 'em coming Gerry.

[Stephen Van Court · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly a Thriller

While the story was basically entertaining, it wasn't what I'd call "thrilling" . I learned quite a bit about '60s nuclear subs and, being a period piece, the cultural references were nostalgic. There were no graphic sex scenes and very little violence. While there were some unexpected plot twists, for the most part it just seemed to drag - I did quite a bit of skimming. Spoiler alert - I thought it might finally achieve "thriller" status about 80% in, but it just fizzled with everything wrapping up too cleanly.

[Michael E. Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exciting and tantalizing

I often read books about submarines and undersea and this is how this book started . As I read on , I found it was more a spy end subversive story . It became very interesting and I really enjoyed the book . Though this is not my type of fiction , I would certainly read more by this author

[Frederick B. Buckholz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

Having been part of the nuclear navy and lived in the bay area starting in the early 70's this book brought back some great memories. Very factual.

[Chris & Carol Delgado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spy novel

Great read could not put it down great characters in this book good story line hard to believe but who cares it fiction right?