Red Star Falling by Steve Berry and Grant Blackwood

Published by Grand Central Publishing on June 11, 2024

Red Star Falling takes place in the present, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In this version of reality, Putin is a man named Konstantin Franko. Apart from the name, he is essentially Putin. Franko took over from Aleksei Delov, who took over from Gorbachev. I suppose that makes Delov the analog of Boris Yeltsin, although Yeltsin died in 2007. Delov is dying but he’s determined to bring down Franko, who has betrayed the principles of democracy that Delov championed.

Luke Daniels works for the Magellan Billet, a fictional counterterrorist unit of the Justice Department that conducts international investigations. Luke’s mentor is Cotton Malone, the protagonist in a long series of Steve Berry novels.

Red Star is an old Soviet program that maintained orbiting satellites armed with nuclear warheads. Delov ordered the satellites to self-destruct. All but one. He wants to put an end to Franco by dropping that one on Moscow. Not a bad idea, apart from the tens of thousands of innocent people who would die. The solution to the Russian dictatorship is too extreme for Luke’s sensibilities.

Luke had been stationed in Hungary, working with the CIA on an operation that ran intelligence agents in Ukraine. The operation fell apart and CIA agent John Vince was captured by Russia. Now Vince has gotten word to Luke that he’s still alive. Luke resolves to get him out of Russia.

Vince is in prison with Efim Kozar, one of two surviving scientists who understand the launch details for a Red Star attack. The other is Ilya Mashir, who has the codes to activate the nuclear device and send the Red Star tumbling toward Moscow. Kozar was recently questioned by Delov’s bodyguard and, based on that questioning, has figured out that Delov plans to activate the Red Star. He imparted that information to Vince.

In the action thriller tradition, Luke embarks on a series of adventures. He needs to break Vince out of a remote Russian prison. Vince wants Luke to take Kozar, which sparks a new mission — finding Mashir, acquiring the self-destruct code, and making his way to the station that communicates with Red Star so he can send the code. But the code is encrypted and Mashir needs Luke to recover a book from a Russian museum that is under the control of an oligarch so he can decrypt the code. Mashir also has a vested interest in recovering the library of Ivan the Terrible from the gangster oligarch who now controls it.

This chain of events struck me as unlikely make-work, existing only to give Luke some thrilling tasks to complete. Such is the nature of the modern thriller. Finding the book from Ivan's library struck me as particularly silly, but at least Luke didn’t have to raid a tomb.

Luke gets a hand from Danielle Otero, a former Russian agent who was in love with Vince. What’s a thriller without a beautiful Russian spy? Danielle has a grudge against Franko and would like to get revenge against all the people she holds accountable for Vince’s capture. Details of Luke’s travels with Danielle through remote parts of Russia give the novel a sense of realism that helps the reader disregard the unlikely nature of the plot.

As is his habit, Berry did copious research when writing the novel. While research contributes to atmosphere, he provides more historical detail about Ivan’s library and certain locations (such as the history of Oreshek Island and the construction of its fortress) than the story needs.

Although the plot bogs down on occasion, it usually moves forward at a steady pace, adventure following adventure, complete with fistfights, gunfights, helicopter rides during storms, boat chases — the familiar trappings of an action thriller. The action is reasonably credible. The novel is a bit light on the tradecraft that fans of espionage novels might crave, but it does feature the betrayals that are a standard part of spy fiction. Fans of action thrillers will find much to enjoy in Red Star Falling.

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