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R. L. Crossland
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Red Ice: A Cold War Thriller Kindle Edition

by R. L. Crossland (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
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At the height of the Cold War, a cashiered SEAL officer living in Japan is retained by a world-famous Russian dissident to rescue a friend from the Siberian Gulag. The SEAL officer recruits and trains a group to undertake the cold weather operation and even finagles an off-the-books diesel submarine . . . for a price. The rescue is grueling and the withdrawal harrowing.
 
Red Ice takes place in Japan’s Honshu and Hokkaido Islands, South Korea, Russia’s Kuril Islands, the Sea of Okhotsk, and Siberia.
 
It is a relentless tale of cross-cultural naval intrique as it is practiced in rubber boats and kayaks, in pup tents and snow caves, on skis, and aboard submarines. Red Ice is savagely authentic in its description of this brand of unconventional warfare and of the individual tensions that haunt the men who practice it.
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  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Open Road Distribution
  5. Publication date
    March 8, 2016
  6. File size
    3466 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A first-class war novel -- exciting, terse, and a page turner for sure!"-Robin Moore, author of The Green Berets and The French Connection"Raw adventure . . . exciting storytelling!"-Bestselling author Clive Cussler"Red Ice is red-hot . . . told with an eye for action and detail only an ex-SEAL could have."-Guy Durham, author of Stealth

About the Author

Captain Crossland served as a Navy SEAL platoon officer in Vietnam in 1971. During his combat tour in Cà Mau, An Xuyên Province, Vietnam, he participated in Phoenix operations (the abduction of high level Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army leaders) and Britelight operations (the rescue of American P.O.W.s). Immediately following his Vietnam tour, he served as an advisor teaching unconventional warfare tactics to the South Korean Underwater Demolition Teams in Chinhae, Korea. On completion of his active duty, he elected to attend law school and remain in the naval reserve. As a reserve officer he received orders to South Korea on nine additional occasions.
 
In 2002 he was mobilized as a reserve officer for duty with Naval Special Warfare Group One Afghanistan and elsewhere in Central and Southwest Asia. In 2005, Capt. Crossland retired with 35 years commissioned service, active and reserve, as a SEAL officer.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01BWA2F4A
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Distribution (March 8, 2016)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 8, 2016
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3466 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • Customer Reviews:

About the author

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R. L. Crossland

R. L. Crossland

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With the benefit of thirty-five years’ service, active and reserve, as a U.S. Navy SEAL officer (two hot wars. one cold), Crossland has found projecting his grasp of naval intrigue one hundred years into the past an agreeable challenge.

Captain Crossland has written internationally on the subject of maritime unconventional warfare and includes U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings and the New York Times among his credits. His historical crime novel, Jade Rooster, received the Admiral David Glasgow Farragut Book Award for naval literature in 2008.

Recently The Abalone Ukulele was awarded the Admiral David Glasgow Farragut Book Award also.

In December of 2022, in recognition of his contribution to military and naval literature, and having been an actual combatant, or otherwise involved, in special operations in the Far East (Vietnam and nine trips to Korea) and Afghanistan, CAPT Crossland was awarded the Military Order of Saint Louis by the Saint Patrick's Priory of the autonomous US Grand Priory of the International Templar Organization (OSMTH).

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
11 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Paul W. Herrick
5.0 out of 5 stars I love SEAL books written by REAL SEALs
Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2014
I love SEAL books written by REAL SEALs. You get insights that you can't get from authors who haven't "been there and done that". A good example is the "deep depression" narrative in the latter part of chapter 20. Commander Crossland expresses very candidly the personal feelings of a man who conceives, plans, organizes, and carries out adventurous and dangerous missions. This usually happens during the time period between mission prep and mission execute, and often includes thoughts like "What the ____have I gotten us into this time?". If you want to know the real inner thoughts and emotions of a SEAL leader, read Red Ice.
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doug caldwell
4.0 out of 5 stars Although the work is fiction the book is detailed and ...
Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2014
Verified Purchase
Although the work is fiction the book is detailed and accurate on the challenges and hardship of a rescue mission into a Siberian Gulag camp.
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R. Richard Livorine
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book
Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2001
A friend recommended this book to me, and it exceeded his praises. "Red Ice" is a combat story, an adventure, a thriller - altogether a first-rate read. Carefully plotted with strong, well-defined characters, it shimmers with an authenticity only those with actual experience in military special operations and the raw talent to vividly describe them can achieve. The author, R.L. Crossland, led special operations in Vietnam as a Navy SEAL officer, and his service there forms the basis for the hero of Red Ice, ex-SEAL officer Quillon Frazer.
The Vietnam war is over, and Frazer is living in Japan attempting to make the transition to peace by operating a diving business. He is jerked out of this new world by a well-known Russian dissident who fears for the life of a friend consigned to the Siberian gulag - the pre-Yeltsin gulag. He offers a fortune if Frazer can rescue this prisoner, rescue him from the very heart of Siberia. The plan is brazen, the objective seemingly impossible, the conditions brutal. There is no margin for error.
Frazer views the problem as presenting three distinct aspects - equally essential, interrelated, and all with their own unique difficulties. He must locate the prisoner, arrange transportation to and from a suitably near strike-point, and recruit and train the raiding party. Each of these is thoroughly explained and explored by Frazer, and the reader is capably guided through the respective netherworlds where such things are routinely considered.
To find the prisoner, Frazer negotiates the byzantine world of international intelligence and diplomacy, explaining his contacts in intriguing detail. His military planning and logistics are especially interesting, applied as they are to the harsh Siberian climate which is perfectly described. When the wind blows across the snow and ice you hear it in these pages. Frazer calls upon a coterie of acquaintances, a facinating variety of combat specialists, to assist him. He draws these people from the elite fringes of conventional military personnel, ranging from the French Foreign Legion to British Gurkha to Royal Marines and SEALS. To assemble a cohesive unit from these strong-willed, disparate types is among the many challenges Frazer faces. His success in doing so constitutes a worthwhile study in itself apart from the compelling story he tells. Each of these specialists carries his own story within him, and Crossland writes with the authority of one who has known such men. Their training is rigorous and designed both to prepare and to cull the unreliable.
Told in the first person, one gets to know Frazer's mind in great detail which further serves to give him a reality so often missing from war stories - where heroes often become mere caricatures, their stories cartoons. Not here. This is a gripping tale, suspenseful but unpretentious, written with a sure hand and a wonderful economy of expression. It is filled with riveting observations as cold and hard as the land Frazer must travel; for example, observing prisoners milling about two bonfires following an attack on the prison, Frazer notes that "In Siberia, holidays were where you found them."
There is nothing superfluous in this book, nothing to distract the reader from the adventure unfolding before him. Although Crossland is quite at home with the intricacies of military intelligence and covert operations, his narrative never descends to endless acronyms and needless detail as a substitute for action, good dialogue, and plot. Nor is all as straight forward as it seems - a final twist invigorates the entire tale, giving even a second reading additional appeal.
I heartily recommend Red Ice to anyone who enjoys a careful, tight plot, well-drawn, unusual characters, and the unique challenges of military special operations. It is a perfect fit with the great tradition of The Guns of Navarone. It's hard to put down, even harder to forget.
R. Richard Livorine
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