hints to actions are made without giving away how the end will come off. Clancy is a master of juggling two sides of the coin and being able to seamlessly bring everything together in a way that keeps you wondering how he did it. or will the KGB find out who he is before the CIA gets what is needed? Like Hunt for Red October, The Cardinal of the Kremlin has multiple view points and is fun to keep track of, but instead of three we now have nine different major aspects (one is a husband wife team) with minor key players brought in as well. can the CIA get what they need and get there man out. what will happen when the game between the CIA and the KGB are fought over one man. When the Cardinal chain breaks down with some important information the CIA want on lasers and that the KGB get a hint that there is a spy with highly top secret information being leaked they unleash the whole team to find out who it could be. and travels back and forth with the ambassador and his team to give his CIA analyst still to his country. Ryan is back, and this time he is part of the US, USSR nuclear arms talks.

when the Russians make a break through in laser technology he is asked to look into it. To continue from Hunt for the Red October, this book is about someone who was hinted to before, a CIA source so valuable in the USSR that his information is DELTA class important and only five people know who he is, Code name Cardinal. But a book like 'Cardinal' loses a lot when it is read like the evening news instead of the emotional human drama that it is. Don't get me wrong- Prichard is a fine reader of nonfiction. In certain passages, such as the pivotal conversation between Felitov and his KGB interrogator, I sorely missed the intensity and well-defined character sense of David Ogden Stiers' performance of the dialog. Nonetheless, I did feel at times like the soul of this often-soulful story was drained in Prichard's read. Perhaps it's unfair to rate Michael Prichard's read when matched up against the masterful performance of the abridged version by David Ogden Stiers. As far as the reading of the story was concerned, I was less impressed. I've been waiting for a long time to see unabridged Audible versions of some of the Jack Ryan novels. It felt like I was getting 'bonus material' beyond the original version of the story that I knew. And in terms of the quality of the story, I enjoyed the unabridged version of this story even more than the abridgment that I bought many years ago. I've always thought that 'Cardinal' was the most interesting of Clancy's Jack Ryan books.

The cardinal of the kremlin book