Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but poorly written
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but poorly written
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: The weakest of the 'Jake Grafton' series.
Review: I think that the Kirkus review (above) hits the nail on the head when it claims that "Coonts's plots are getting as overcomplicated as Tom Clancy's." The problem is that Clancy is a much better writer than Coonts; where Clancy *might* have been able to make this mess work, Coonts executes a 'gear up' landing. This story has mass murder, characters poisoning one another, agencies of the United States government conspiring against one another, all pretty dark themes. Sadly, the story is also dark, as in muddy and incomprehensible. Characters aspire to become one dimensional, and in the end are placeholders, flat scenery, making expository speeches which seem to exist only to explain their point of view. At one point in the book, when Jake Grafton and Rita Tarkington (an American female naval aviator) take off in Russian jets from a base inside Russia to track down the bad guys, the Russian mechanics sabotage the planes in manner calculated to kill the pilots - this only rates an aside in the book. If you're looking for a Coonts book which carries off themes like these well, please let me reccomend Coonts' "Minotaur". It's also pretty grim, but done much better, and is one of the best "spy novels" that I've read.
Rating:
Summary: The weakest of the 'Jake Grafton' series.
Review: I think that the Kirkus review (above) hits the nail on the head when it claims that "Coonts's plots are getting as overcomplicated as Tom Clancy's." The problem is that Clancy is a much better writer than Coonts; where Clancy *might* have been able to make this mess work, Coonts executes a 'gear up' landing. This story has mass murder, characters poisoning one another, agencies of the United States government conspiring against one another, all pretty dark themes. Sadly, the story is also dark, as in muddy and incomprehensible. Characters aspire to become one dimensional, and in the end are placeholders, flat scenery, making expository speeches which seem to exist only to explain their point of view. At one point in the book, when Jake Grafton and Rita Tarkington (an American female naval aviator) take off in Russian jets from a base inside Russia to track down the bad guys, the Russian mechanics sabotage the planes in manner calculated to kill the pilots - this only rates an aside in the book. If you're looking for a Coonts book which carries off themes like these well, please let me reccomend Coonts' "Minotaur". It's also pretty grim, but done much better, and is one of the best "spy novels" that I've read.
Rating: 
Summary: Not his best - but better than most.
Review: I'm a fan of Stephen Coonts, and look forward to every new release. I snatched this up the moment I saw it in my bookshop, and it took me all of a day to read it. Like all Mr Coonts' books, this is great fun. The Admiral allows himself to go completely O.T.T. at times, Toad rushes around, being horny and dreadfully in love, the bad guys are as cold and calculating as anything you're ever likely to read.. and hey, it's a good read. Don't try to find too much in it - simply enjoy it. It's a very good addition to Jake Grafton's history, and everything works pretty well. No, it's not Mr. Coonts' best. But then - his worst is a darn' sight better than the best of most of the writers who work in this genre.
Rating:
Summary: Implausible thriller
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: The whole enchilada!!
Review: My absolute favorite of the Jake Grafton Series. Grafton is at his most dangerous, compared to the other Grafton Novels . There are enough twists and turns on the ground and in the air to make the book hard to put down.The chapter with the the
SU-25's, kicks things into overdrive. I would love to see a movie made of this one!
Rating:
Summary: This one deserves 200 STARS!
Review: Stephen Coonts's very best so far! A well-researched, fast-paced and easy-to-read thriller which deals with the story of a nuclear power plant explosion, caused by a renegade general intent on using the disaster to gain him access to a tactical nuclear weapons storage depot, to sell them to Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, members of the CIA are dropping down like flies in a binary poisoning plot which claims the life of a British newspaper tycoon(a thinly fictionalised Robert Maxwell) and could have been lifted from THE X-FILES. The flying sequences are as ever, as brilliant as Dale Brown with all the autheticity and fully-explained technics you could want, and it's interesting to see Jake Grafton handle Russian fighters for a change! The final scenes in Saudi Arabia and Iraq provide an excellent backdrop to the mission to retrieve the stolen warheads, and the Moscow scenes are also authentic and well-researched. Once again, like Tom Clancy's CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN, it brought back memories of my visit there. Well done Stephen Coonts, and an ideal starting point for those new to this excellent author's work!
Rating:
Summary: Stephen Coonts flying high at a low altitude
Review: 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
Rating:
Summary: The whole enchilada!!
Review: The Red Horseman finds regular Coonts character Jake Grafton, now working for the DIA, traveling to the post Cold War Russia to prevent their nuclear weapons from turning up in places like the Middle East, struggling against CIA and KGB operatives along the way. The appearences of two world leaders adds a certain realism to the story. The story itself is rather complicated but does not seem that way with Coonts's style of writing. The flying scenes were wonderfully described, as usual, and the book also includes a particularly well written combat scene with special forces near the end. This is one of the better and more original novels to revolve around Russia after communism and the Cold War, a much too overused subject in many military and political thrillers. This may be Coonts's best book.
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