Blind Man's Bluff

Less than a decade after the Cold War, the cat-and-mouse games that U.S. and Soviet submarines played throughout it already seem insane. Still these stories of undersea derring-do are as exciting as any spy thriller, and the authors have a touch of Len Deighton or Jack Higgins. Unlike many works about military intelligence, this one never bogs down in jargon, and even in abridged form it's easy to stay on top of the characters and the action. When Tony Roberts assumes the characters' voices (sometimes dangerous in nonfiction), he has a commendable arsenal for projecting rugged sailors, Russian leaders, and a pretty fine Ronald Reagan. D.B. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine

October 19, 1998
In an unusually successful amalgam, veteran journalists Sontag and Christopher Drew combine a gripping story with admirable research to relate previously unknown information. Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. depended heavily on submarines for intelligence gathering, whether tracking Soviet missile subs, monitoring Soviet harbors and missile tests or, in some cases, retrieving lost Soviet equipment. The U.S.S.R. responded with everything from comprehensive espionage operations to depth charge attacks on particularly intrusive snoopers. The broad outlines of this clandestine confrontation are relatively familiar, but the details have largely remained secret. Although the authors have based their book largely on interviews with submariners, intelligence operatives and politicians, they recognize the possibility of distortion and back up personal accounts with an elaborate and convincing system of verification. While necessarily incomplete, the resulting work depicts what was arguably the most successful long-term, large-scale intelligence operation in American history. From captains to seamen, the participants combined technical proficiency, insouciant courage and a cheerful scorn for regulations that often interfered with their missions. That mind-set was hardly calculated to avoid direct confrontations, and accidental collisions were not uncommon. The authors nevertheless make a solid case that the risk of a destabilizing incident was far outweighed by the gains of the campaign--especially given the depth of mutual ignorance during the Cold War.