Book Review: "Rogue Trident"

Just finished reading a new submarine adventure book by a submariner who did his JO tour on USS Kentucky. "Rogue Trident", by John Hindinger, is a pretty good first novel, and much better than the average submarine-based tale.

I was interested to see how a book by someone with recent submarine experience would handle the various technical aspects of submarining; when I left the Navy, I had to sign something that if I was ever going to publish something like a book, I'd have to clear it through the Navy. Hindinger did a pretty good job in his descriptions of "life back aft" of avoiding the classified stuff while still making it somewhat believable. That being said, there were a few holes. He gets into a short discussion of Xenon, for instance, that really didn't fit; but, at least it got brought up, so that should make the ROs happy. He also seemed to be saying that the Atlantic entrance to the Arctic is shallow water, when it's actually thousands of feet deep. The most famous of the submarine adventure books, "Hunt For Red October", had probably 10% of the techical details right -- what made it so special at the time was that was an order of magnitude more than any other similar book. This book is much more technically accurate, if that's what you're looking for.

With any type of "stolen submarine" book, you have to suspend disbelief, and this book is no different. Still, the scenario he comes up with is more "believable" than most... Without giving too much away, I remember plenty of bull sessions where people would try to figure out the minimum number of crewmembers you'd need to get a boat to sea. Of course, that was in a discussion of oncoming hurricanes, rather than for-profit schemes.

Overall, I thought the book was a worthy first effort. I understood the main character's motivations, but was a little unclear on why the supporting cast were doing what they were doing. Submariners are shown as real people with real problems -- these guys just react to their problems in ways that are a little over the top. I'm happy to be able to recommend this book to my readers; ordering information is here.