Chapter By Chapter> Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image chapter 8

Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter (or possibly multiple chapter for this one) of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.

A bit of a quandary here. Tonight’s chapter is only five pages long, but the next chapter is about nine. Five is a chapter for me, but there’s too many of both pages to combine them, and I’m still trying to shake off last week’s all distractions all week and get back on schedule. So short chapter it is.

Last time we checked back in with Op-Center and my expectations are still low for our hero stand-ins. This chapter takes us back to St. Petersburg, where we check in with Commie Op-Center or the British spy who I’m hoping gets to the end of the story.

While the Cold War is technically over, stories of Ruskie Commies trying to restore the Soviet Union and communism to the former USSR still continue. I’d say they can’t get over the stories they could tell about US/USSR relations but considering Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, is actively trying to restore communism in Russia and reform the Union, it’s not like we don’t have some life left in the bear to tell this story. We’ve lost the defector stories, but we have China and North Korea to solve that issue…if the entertainment industry wasn’t smitten with China for some reason. This book came out as the Cold War was dying out, so the “restore the Soviet Union” plot wasn’t played out yet, although we would still get Russian characters who wanted to see the old system put back because they still believed the malarkey propaganda that allowed communism to continue in Russia.

Now the same people who praised Russia and the Soviet Union in the 1980s hate them in the 2020s. Funny how life works. But I’m done padding the homepage. Let’s see what’s happening in the interesting part of the story.

Sunday, 4:35 PM, St. Petersburg

Awww…I was really starting to like Fields-Hutton. I mean, kudos to a creative death, but still…they killed the only likable character besides Paul in this book so far.

Half of the chapter is describing St. Petersburg as it goes dusk. Of course the listening device wasn’t getting the info he needed, but maybe taking one last trip around the museum was a bad idea. That’s when a lady agent used her dog to open a wound that allowed her to pour a nerve agent right into his bloodstream while pretending to be a helpful jogger sorry her dog bit into him. I hate her for killing one of my new favorite characters, a comic editing spy with a likable personality, and of course the narrator had to mention a lover to make his death more saddening. However, you have to admire the creativity, even if it was used for evil.

And since Fields-Hutton didn’t get to ditch the laptop, Commie Op-Center will soon know what D16 knows about them, unless there’s a further safeguard. Meaning right now regular Op-Center is our only hope of stopping Commie Op-Center. In other words, slim chance, with plot armor possibly being the only hope we have now. With any luck a new hero rises, like we saw with the Blue Beetle from Dan Garrett to Ted Kord because I just reviewed that story recently and I want to keep the comic connection. Farewell, Keith Fields-Hutton. You deserved a better role in this story, and now we get the heroes we don’t deserve.

The next chapter takes us to the Russian/Ukrainian border. It has to at least go better than what’s happening there in 2024. Right? We’ll find out next time.