Chapter By Chapter> Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image chapter 30

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 short chapter this week, but given time and how chapters are going to go for awhile I’m okay with this.

Last time our heroes showed more intelligence in one chapter than I saw in most of the first book, as they begin to put pieces together in Dogin’s little jigsaw of a plan to overthrow the new Russian government and restore communism.

This chapter is only about five pages, but I don’t have as much time as I’d like so I’ll work with it. The next few chapters will be combos but right now I’m not sure how that combination is going to be going. The way chapters here continue to bother me. At least you can make the case that scene are ending in the right spot thus far, but I think not understanding where to put chapter breaks is one of the reasons I never got into writing novels. I’m still hoping one of the authors who stop buy will talk about how they do chapters in their stories, but right now I’m out of stuff to intro with. So let’s get into this one and see if they got it right.

Chapter 30: Tuesday, 11:20 PM, Moscow

There isn’t much to summarize. Volko, the man working with Fields-Hutton, is being interrogated, but rather than beat information he doesn’t have out of him like he expected, the officer convinces him to be a triple agent and help him find the British spy cell. Volko agrees by threat of force, but he is thinking of ways to fight back.

I can’t say I blame him. Volko is a loyal Russian and he doesn’t really know the full extent of Dogin’s plans. It’s not even an assurance yet that this Pogodin knows anything. He’s just doing his job. He just happens to be doing it for the bad guys if he’s in on it, and being a sucker if he isn’t. Getting out of being tortured and having a chance to still help the people who were actually there for him is certainly preferable. Plus he’s not doing this out of a hatred for his homeland. It might have been interesting to have him as an ex-patriot, or if he knew about what Dogin was up to, testing to see if Pogodin is part of the plot (I’m still not fully convinced that Paul’s idea of not telling Zhanin about the coup attempt is the right move unless he’s waiting for more evidence). Right now we don’t know that Pogodin is with Dogin or just protecting his country from spies. We’ll see as things go on.

Next time starts the multiple chapter boom. Not sure how long that will last but we’ll see in the coming weeks how long it takes before Chapter By Chapter stops needing plurals.