Clancy Chronologically: Sum of All Fears

You've been on pins and needles for somebody to review the books your dad was reading when you were in middle school; we're here to help.  Last year, we read all of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan books in order of Ryanverse chronology rather than order of publication (we include the John Clark and Jack Ryan Jr. books in this process).  This year, we're doing it again and posting about each of the books as we complete them/manage to be sufficiently unlazy to actually post a blog.  Your comments are more than welcome. NOTE: POSSIBLE DECADES-OLD SPOILERS!!!

Plots/Subplots

Jack Ryan is now the Deputy Director of Intelligence, but now he has a lot of crappy bosses.  The new CIA director, Marcus Cabot, is lazy and impressed with himself for being the CIA director. Charles Alden, National Security Adviser, conveniently and suddenly dies, the NSA position then going to Elizabeth Elliott, who had a run-in with Jack a book ago.  We'll cover her, um, female dog-iness hereafter.  President Bob Fowler is a good man but just doesn't understand national security, leaning foolishly on his non-Jack advisers.  Burned out and finally being asked to leave, he finds himself facing One Last Job.

Despite his hatred of his job and his body breaking down, Jack comes up with an idea that will certainly end war in the Middle East: a multi-religion quasi-theocracy will govern Jerusalem and dispute parts of Israel, with security provided by the Swiss and American armies.  The main function of this byzantine plotline is to make Jack unhappy as he gets no credit while President Fowler basks in the glow of his world-saving awesomeness with the hot but vile Liz Elliott by his side.

In a 1973 battle, an Israeli fighter jet carrying a nuclear bomb is shot down in Syria.  While officials believe the bomb was destroyed in the crash, it remains intact, but a farmer just buries it.  His son later discovers it and passes on the information to his friends who happen to be engineers/terrorists, Ismael Qati and Ibrahim Ghosn.  Qati and Ghosn team up with some German socialist terrorists and decide to blow up the Super Bowl to be held in Denver (we'll get to that) and stage a few other actions to bait the Americans and the Soviets into nuking each other.  Or is that their goal?  A conversation between Jack and Qati seems to suggest that the terrorists actually wanted the Americans to nuke the holy city of Qom, which would make them the enemies of all Islam and undo the peace treaty (which strikes us as a less effective goal than having their infidel enemies eliminate each other).  If that seems like a nonsensical twist and a cheap way to bring back the peace talks story to you, you would be correct.

Sioux tribesman/criminal/murderous badass Marvin Russell watches his criminal brother get killed by the FBI in a standoff, so he goes off to hook up with the terrorists who don't tell him the full extent of the plan.  He serves to help operations on the ground once they're in Colorado.  No, this doesn't make a tiny bit of sense.

Loggers cut down some trees to be used in a temple in Japan, requiring a lot of special treatment in the way they are handled.  While being transported from the U.S. to Japan, a storm causes them to lose some of the logs.  That's it.  No, we are not making this up - this required many pages of detail. More on this ultra-compelling story later.  (Actually, that's enough.)

Cathy Ryan is worried about her husband; he sleeps poorly, he's gotten fatter, he's been hitting the bottle pretty hard, he barely sleeps, and he's never around.  She sees this as the perfect opportunity to have another child (who wouldn't?) but is thwarted by Jack's malfunctioning baby cannon. Since Jack was too stupid to tell her about his promise to the dying Buck Zimmer (in Clear and Present Danger) to take care of Zimmer's wife and kids, when Cathy hears a Liz Elliott-engineered hit piece on the news about a high-ranking government official accused of sexual misconduct, she immediately freaks out.  Rather than actually talking to her husband, she freaks out.

John Clark drives Jack around and Ding Chavez goes to college.  Clark and Chavez serve as bodyguards, health advisers, and marriage counselors.  They also arrest (yes, arrest) the terrorists. We imagine Tom Clancy wrote Without Remorse next to make it up to Clark for treating him so badly in this book.

Villains

Tom Clancy is frequently referred to as a Cold War author which is only partially true.  Jack Ryan does go back to battle the Russkies 1 1/2 times even after the dissolution of the USSR (Red Rabbit and the flashback parts of Command Authority).  While the Russians are the most compelling opponent (they seem to be of the few groups he truly respects and grudgingly admires), Clancy made an effort to diversify the bad guys - American drug dealers, the Colombian drug cartel, Japanese fascist businessmen, an Iranian dictatorship, the IRA, and in Sum, German and Syrian socialist terrorists teaming up.  In each case, Clancy is primarily interested in the how of their evil deeds and only occasionally the why.  Bad guys get story arcs, but not character arcs.  

Everybody Hates Liz

It would have been more interesting if Liz had had more outright admirers, but virtually everybody in the book calls her a female dog at least once, including the President she's sleeping with.  Her character is reflective of the "shrew, saint, or victim" roles Clancy establishes for every woman. Married women are always saints, though single women can also be victims or shrews.  (You can be a victim/saint, but not a victim/shrew).  Predictably, in the time of crisis she assumes a mental/emotional fetal position and supports the most aggressive/crazy options, so President Bangshisadviser listens to her. 

Saint Cathy verbally destroys Shrew Liz in public (in front of reporters!) when she finds out that Liz has monkeyed with Her Man.

Names

We assume he died in the terrorist attack in Denver, but either Tony Wills the star Vikings rookie running back survives the nuclear blast of the climax and goes on to work with Jack Ryan Jr at The Campus or Tom Clancy recycled the name in Teeth of the Tiger.    

More Techno Than a European Discotheque

This is the Tom Clancyest book in that point of the series.  We spend a tremendous amount of time in submarines, one American and one Russian, as they do absolutely nothing except spew a lot of jargon until a minor scene near the end of the book.  We're brought up to date on the old submarine gang from the previous books who are all now desk jockeys.

Voluminous pageload is full of description of how the nuke is built, in narration and through dialogue.  The primary item of consequence in the building process isn't a technical detail, but a brief story note of a crew member inadvertently tainting the bomb, rendering it significantly less effective.  In the afterword, Clancy warns us that anybody with a library card can get the details of how to build a WMD if they only get their hands on the proper materials; he makes alterations to some of the specifics "to salve my conscience, not in any reasonable expectation that it matters a damn."  As usual, the techno-jargon adds a sense of credibility if not readability.

Review

A staple of Tom Clancy novels is putting forth an attack or crisis that is unimaginable, then it is made believable as the story and details of the plot unfold.  Contrasting that are less believable elements like how women talk and act, various heroes' ability to speak foreign languages with astonishing capability, the seeming infallibility of the FBI, returning characters obtaining jobs convenient to the new plots even in different countries or agencies, etc.  The crazy plot is more plausible than some of the human interactions.  Sum of All Fears makes a compelling case for how a devastating terror act could be carried out with no warning (can't track the Lone Wolf) but not why a Sioux guy would hook up with Syrian terrorists, or why the preternaturally level-headed Cathy wouldn't just talk to her husband when she had suspicions about his fidelity, or why the hell President Fowler wouldn't just pick up the freaking phone and call if he wasn't sure if it was Narmonov at the other end of the messaging system.

One of the least believable aspects of the story is that the Super Bowl is being held in Denver, which has long had an outdoor NFL stadium and the NFL wouldn't have its biggest game outside in a cold city (unless the New York teams just built a multi-billion dollar stadium).  Having the terrorists blow up the Super Bowl makes sense, but it makes us wonder if Tom Clancy ate a lousy steak there or if he got a lot of negative reviews in the Denver Post and was taking his fictional revenge.  Killing the secretary of state and the secretary of defense in the blast (along with the head of NORAD in Denver and another general in a car accident in Snowmageddon-ridden Washington D.C. area) helps narrow down Fowler's advisers to Jack vs. Liz, but was it necessary for the two Secretaries to be owners of the two teams that made the Super Bowl?

The book, like a Ryanverse male talking to a woman, is incredibly dense.  Clancy research positively beats the reader over the head (we're an experienced Clancy reader, so we know how and when to skim the drier parts).  There are some nice moments of humor and humanity as colleagues converse and get to know each other.  Sum really delivers in the meat of the book, creating massive tension from the time the bomb arrives in Denver all through the leadership crisis as Russia and America are on the brink of the war generations dreaded.  As usual, the action is crisp and transportive in the descriptions of Jack trying (and failing) to reason with Fowler while Elliott derails him, the attack in Germany fans the flames, and various elements of the government in Denver and Washington try to put the puzzle together.

Jack Ryan is like Jack Shephard from Lost.  Jack Shephard is supposed to be a man of reason/science yet is always the first one to sprint into the jungle with a gun and no plan.  Jack Ryan is repeatedly insinuate to be a "Boy Scout" because of all of his rule-following (clearly not an epithet devised by anybody who has ever actually worked with Boy Scouts), though he consistently steps outside the bounds of his position: he authorizes military exfiltrations, regularly tells off authority figures (the President, the Prince, etc.), usurps the US/USSR president-to-president communication line, accesses information he is not cleared for, shares information with people who are not cleared for it, constantly works around appropriate channels of authority/jurisdiction, and straight up becomes a temporary dictator in later books.  Both of these beloved Jacks are inaccurately portrayed in their respective roles. 

Sum of All Fears also lays some of the groundwork for Debt of Honor and Executive Orders by subtly integrating the future villains, though Without Remorse was actually the next book published.  It makes us wonder how Clancy structured the writing of these novels* - he published The Hunt for Red October first with the background story to Patriot Games built in, a casual comment in Clear and Present Danger summarizes the entirety of Without Remorse, and Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, co-villain of Debt of Honor and chief villain of Executive Orders is literally introduced to Jack Ryan in this book.

The Abominable Movie Starring Ben Paycheck

This was in a series of movies Ben Affleck did in an apparent attempt to squander all of the goodwill he had built up in previous performances; Reindeer Games, Pearl Harbor, Daredevil, Paycheck, Gili, Surviving Christmas, and this turd all were crapped out between 2000-2004.

Affleck's just here for that green paper, and the useless Bridget Moynahan is here to again sully the name of Cathy, this time as the premarital Dr. Muller.  Tom Brady's baby mama is a wet blanket (why the hell does she have so many candles lit in that scene?), though the above clip is probably the most interesting character moment in the movie.  The whole movie is very serious, but the Russian characters are all in an even more serious and maybe profound film:

Our wife made the point that this movie looks ten years older than it is.

Fortunately (?), Cathy survives this mostly unscathed.  Most of the movie makes very little sense. The neo-fascist bad guys want to take over the country after it's been leveled by nuclear war?  Jack's nebulous job description provides little explanation for why the president would listen to him in the first place.  The CIA conducts nuclear inspections for some reason, including Jack, who is an area studies and terrorism analyst. John Clark haphazardly takes untrained Jack on a dangerous mission. Jack survives the helicopter crash in the clip above but the others die, yet he is fine to go on stealing trucks and kicking butt. Only in Movie World does the lead have to physically be in every scene where there's action, regardless of the improbability of travelling to those locations in sufficient time.

Morgan Freeman is somewhat interesting as a non-bumbling Cabot (though Jack still does all the thinking for him) and Liev Schreiber is actually a strong choice to play John Clark, who is more kinetic in the movie than the book.  Director Phil Alden Robinson had previously helmed two really good movies, Field of Dreams and Sneakers, but this project was beyond his reach - poor flow, weak characterization, and a visual mess.

Why the hell isn't Mary Pat Foley prominently featured in any of these Jack Ryan movies?  She's a super-competent hot blonde!

How the WYNE Media Would Do Much Better

We'd leave much of the book's plots intact.  The movie did a smart thing in getting rid of the Marvin Russell story and the excruciating log transportation nonsense.  We'd also leave out the submarine stuff - too expensive and not interesting enough.  The movie did a dumb thing in making the villains Russian "neo-fascists." Maybe the movie release felt too close to 9/11 to have the villains be Middle Eastern, though why then do a terrorism movie at all?  In our TV season, the bad guys would be Arab Muslims, who don't have to be cartoons (they're not in the book).  The Middle East is where the bomb was found and is peppered with groups that do not care for America.  If you were to do it as a period piece (like in our book-per-season model starting with The Hunt for Red October), you could keep the Germans as the terror allies or you could have them be North Korean, Chinese, or Pakistani, all countries who are socialist and have nukes. 

We would add some dimensionality to Liz Elliott - give her causes to care about, let her have tender moments, have her enjoy things other than power.  And if Cathy doesn't talk to Jack, make it plausible: they start to converse but he's too drunk and passes out, they get interrupted with a call from the White House or her hospital, etc.  Jack's fraying psyche is critical to the plot; his temper and lack of patience are significant reasons the president doesn't want to listen to him anymore.

More Mary Pat Foley.  Hot, great at her job, wicked sense of humor...what's not to like?  We'd like to read the book series about her.

Miscellanea

*We sent a fan letter to Tom Clancy in junior high asking how he writes his books.  He told us "one page at a time" which now seems to be a half-truth.

In the movie, the national anthem singer at the Super Bowl is singing a verse other than the first one.  It's a good performance, just unlikely.

In the fictional Super Bowl, Tom Clancy vaporized the Minnesota Vikings in 1991, then tried to buy the real team seven years later.

Fairly early on in the book, Jack says it's his first time in Rome, but the Pope assassination plot in Red Rabbit renders that untrue.

Sum of All Fears introduces us to Dmitri Popov, an officer in Russian intelligence, who reappears as a facilitator for the bad guys in Rainbow Six.

Clancy Chronologically: Clear and Present Danger

You've been on pins and needles for somebody to review the books your dad was reading when you were in middle school; we're here to help.  Last year, we read all of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan books in order of Ryanverse chronology rather than order of publication (we include the John Clark and Jack Ryan Jr. books in this process).  This year, we're doing it again and posting about each of the books as we complete them/manage to be sufficiently unlazy to actually post a blog.  Your comments are more than welcome. NOTE: POSSIBLE DECADES-OLD SPOILERS!!!

Plot/Subplots

President [name redacted] of the [name redacted] Party is facing reelection and is trailing the Democratic candidate in the polls and needs to show he's getting things done.  In order to demonstrate his leadership skills to the voting public, he secretly authorizes his National Security Adviser, Admiral Cutter, and CIA's Deputy Director (Operations), Bob Ritter, to use the military to covertly destroy drug production in Colombia, without the consent or even the knowledge of the Colombian government.


Domingo "Ding" Chavez has evolved from a kid who survived the crime-ridden barrio to become a badass light infantry soldier for the US Army.  He's recruited for a top-secret mission which unravels.

Felix Cortez is a Soviet-trained former Cuban intelligence agent who now works for Ernesto Escobedo, a honcho in the Colombian drug cartel.  As he sniffs out the CIA's plan, Cortez envisions an opportunity to take control of the cartel for himself.

Captain Red Wegener of the Coast Guard and his crew discover a grizzly grisly murder of a family, which leads to the unearthing of a vast operation to move and hide cartel money.  Red and the gang use some unorthodox methods which come back to bite them, but have a shot at redemption in facilitating an important rescue. 

Jack Ryan is now the acting Deputy Director (Intelligence) as James Greer is dying of cancer. Having previously been shut out of the Colombia plan (and therefore was to unknowingly illegally withhold information from Congress), Jack discovers the operation and launches one of his own to rescue the soldiers in danger as the illegal mission falls apart.

Character Flow

Portagee Oreza's Ryanverse introduction here is as a tertiary character hanging out on the Coast Guard boat, though he reappears as a major character in the prequel Without Remorse and again in retirement in Debt of Honor.  We meet Ding Chavez, an important character in each of the subsequent books featured heavily in Rainbow Six and the Campus books.  Buck Zimmer is introduced and dies, Jack vowing to take care of his large family and see his children through college. Zimmer's family is visited a handful of times and Jack's secret support of them is blown up into a scandal in Executive Orders.

When Jack Ryan and John Clark finally meet, Jack learns that Clark has been involved in three of Ryan's operations: participating on the assaults on Action Directe and the abandoned ULA camp (from Patriot Games), and physically putting Gerasimov on the submarine in The Cardinal of the Kremlin.  No mention is made at this time (though it will be in a later book) that Ryan's detective father worked Clark's case in Baltimore.

Evil. Is. Punished.

Through the whole Jack Ryan series, the it's rare that villains go to jail.  They are usually reunited with their Maker, often at the hands/missiles of our heroes, but frequently by their fellow villains or suicide. Traitor Peter Henderson survives Without Remorse, but in Cardinal is caught and forced into being a double agent. In this book, the pirates who murdered the family on the yacht dodge the death penalty, but crooked cops arrange for some fellow inmates to eliminate them.  Danger is the first book where Clancy gets cute about punishing the main bad guys.  Felix Cortez and Ernesto Escobedo are apprehended by our heroes, but since they're unlikely to be properly prosecuted by the applicable justice systems, are delivered to Cuban intelligence and aggrieved cartel chiefs respectively.  Cutter dies in a non-accident.

Review


Danger is a compelling military thriller and political thought exercise.  The War on Drugs is the setting, not the theme.  Drug addicts are considered only through the point of view of their military family members who wish to do harm to the producers of drugs.  The morality or effectiveness of the criminalization of drug use isn't contemplated, but clear contempt is expressed for drug dealers.  This book is largely an extolment of the rule of law.  Jack's problem isn't the idea of the operation or using the military to pursue non-defense aims, it's that he's being forced to lie about it, in violation of the law.

The primary question considered is who is responsible when the Big Choices are made, the person who has the authority to make the call or the personal delegated with the task of doing the actual work?  The answer is: all of the above.  Tom Clancy makes it clear: you must take responsibility to do what's right, especially when you've made a terrible choice, or you're scum.  Ryan stumbles onto the operation starting with information from a third party (the great Robby Jackson), but once he's discovered what has gone wrong, he does everything in his power (and outside it, too) to make it right.  Ritter knows Cutter is going to screw over the remaining soldiers in the jungle, has a crisis of conscience but still chooses self-preservation, and then helps after he's been called out.  Cutter always looks for the expedient and self-aggrandizing path, so Clancy throws him under the bus - literally. Ryanverse characters largely determine their own destiny, either directly like Admiral Cutter or more in the sense of putting themselves in position for Fate to make good use of them, like Jack.

Danger moves along at consistent pace and the dialogue feels natural and interesting.  The characters think and feel through their tasks.  Badasses Ding Chavez and Oso Vega experience dread, pride, determination, fear, and camaraderie in their training and mission. Clark feels elation at first when they bomb the cartel, but reminds himself he's not a psychopath (an idea revisited in Without Remorse).  Jack, ever the self-chider, is tempting to play the CYA game, swallows his fears of flying and combat, feels guilt and responsibility for the men in the jungle, and struggles to accept the reality of Greer's imminent demise (or taking his place).  Felix Cortez always has his eyes open, playing all sides to his advantage, and seizes opportunities as they present themselves.  Clear and Present Danger is one of Clancy's best in terms of both character and plot.

Movie

Check out the cast of this movie: Benjamin Bratt, Dean Jones, Thora Birch, James Earl Jones, Rex Linn (aka Frank from CSI Miami), Freddie from House of Cards, and Clark Gregg (aka Agent Coulson of the Avengers/Agents of SHIELD).  And those are the bit players!  Harrison Ford is a solid Jack Ryan, already experienced at playing an everyman who's also brilliant.  Henry Czerny is fun as Ritter, as you'd expect.  Anne Archer is boring. Cortez and Escobedo are well played by actors you've seen a million times, but my favorite bit of casting is Ding Chavez, played by Raymond Cruz.  You may know him as Tuco from Breaking Bad.  This Tuco:

The movie is an entertaining but somewhat lazy 90s thriller.  Some of the plot consolidation doesn't end up making sense.  Jack is inserted in a lot of action where he wasn't before (they were paying Harrison Ford a zillion dollars): he ends up investigating issues clearly under the jurisdiction of the FBI and showing up in Colombia just to get grenades launched at him. For some reason, President "Bennett" is friends with the crooked guy on the yacht, which mainly serves as a device for Jack to be proud of himself when the president takes his advice on not downplaying the relationship, which we suppose is to be a counterpoint to Jack yelling at the president at the end of the movie.  

Ritter is reduced to a shady bad guy and Clark a shady "good" guy with the weirdly cast Willem Defoe.  The problem of most movie adaptations is that the characters are largely stripped of personality and reduced to plot functionaries (see Ron and Hermione in the Harry Potter series); it's true for every character in this adaptation.  The morality and effectiveness of these political choices are barely considered.

The training scene where Ding blows the mind of the instructing officers is pretty great:

There's also a scene where Escobedo is playing in his batting cage while Cortez is challenging him to reconsider his thinking.  A baseball dramatically flies by Escobedo in slow motion.  It is some bold symbolism.

What About the Movie/TV Show to be Produced by WYNE Media?


What the Clear and Present Danger TV season could do is restore more of the conflicts that make it interesting.  The story most diminished in the transition from book to movie is that of the soldiers fighting in the jungle, from an emotional and action standpoint.  They feel an unease as they recognize they're all Spanish-speaking Latinos.  It is so devastating when Cutter abandons them and they don't know what's going on; Captain Ramirez is tortured by every decision possibility.  Part of the reason these particular soldiers are selected and dressed the way they are is to create an intra-cartel conflict, which is not addressed in the movie.  Cutter does everything he can to try to be divorced from any responsibility from his actions from the beginning.  The show could spend more time on the question of what the President is personally responsible for when he doesn't know the specifics of operations he authorizes or condones (timely with scandals of the last two administrations involving the IRS, NSA spying, Fast and Furious, etc.) In the book, Moira is a combination of widow hampered by grief and yet still a total catch, so the show could give her a lot more humanity than the movie.  The movie doesn't really develop any relationships and doesn't explain why Clark would forgive Ryan after he took the blame for cutting of the soldiers (a dumb deviation), so the show could allow these connections to breathe.

Miscellanea

Dan Murray is a major fixture in the Ryanverse and a prominent FBI person, thus murdering him in the movie was shortsighted.  Dan Murray is the name of one of my high school buddies, who got to see a movie where the characters say "Dan Murray is dead."

Mormon update: we meet Senator Sam Fellows, "the tough-minded Mormon from Arizona" who is best friends with gay liberal New Englander Al Trent.  Jack Ryan is fascinated with the LDS temple.

The movie also includes a dramatic scene where a baseball is shown slow-motion flying through a batting cage for no reason at all.  Alas, we couldn't find a Youtube clip of this important moment.

Clancy Chronologically: The Cardinal of the Kremlin

You've been on pins and needles for somebody to review the books your dad was reading when you were in middle school; we're here to help.  Last year, we read all of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan books in order of Ryanverse chronology rather than order of publication (we include the John Clark and Jack Ryan Jr. books in this process).  This year, we're doing it again and posting about each of the books as we complete them/manage to be sufficiently unlazy to actually post a blog.  Your comments are more than welcome. NOTE: POSSIBLE DECADES-OLD SPOILERS!!!

Plot/Subplots

The Soviet and American governments are simultaneously working furiously to create laser and space weapons systems, code named Bright Star (USSR) and Tea Clipper (USA) while CIA and KGB compete to discover the capabilities of the other side.

Mikhail Filitov (code-named Cardinal) is a high-ranking employee of the Soviet military, a decorated war hero, and having been personally screwed over by the USSR's ineptitude, steals a nuclear submarine becomes a decades-long source of intelligence for the United States.  When his secret is revealed, can the Foleys get him out in time??? 

Within the Politburo, a key member is dying and must soon be replaced.  Government figures maneuver to create alliances and jockey for position; how the hell will this relate to our main story?  (Hint: his name rhymes with Schmack Schmyan). 

Jack Ryan happens to be in this book, so he puts the pieces together.  And despite his not being in the Operations Directorate, he is personally involved in executing operations.

Historical Context

Younger readers might find two prominent plot issues, the laser wars and the US's involvement in supporting Afghan jihadis, to be less than believable, but were in fact major issues of the time.  America's program to have a space-based laser-shooting defense system was widely called Star Wars, a problem-ridden and hugely expensive debacle.  Russians look at the Afghan war the way Americans look at Vietnam.  Along with several U.N. allies, America trained, armed, and fed intelligence to Afghan warlords resisting Soviet invasion; these are the very warlords that would become the Taliban and al Qaeda.  

It is impossible to read The Cardinal of the Kremlin in a post 9/11 context without feeling a sense of dread and regret as Emilio Ortiz of the CIA teaches the Afghans to use more advanced weaponry and tactics.  The US and USSR fought a number of proxy wars in the name of containment vs. global communism, and the Afghanistan conflict was no different.  We couldn't find much about public opinion of US involvement, but supporting the mujahideen was a decades-long commitment, another gift of the glorious Jimmy Carter administration.  Cardinal gives very brief consideration to the "rightness" of the policy: in the two sentence deliberation, Ortiz admits "he didn't know."  Consideration of the rightness of actions becomes a hallmark of later books in the series, especially in Clear and Present Danger, but reading this historical-ish story in our present context adds a strange layer of conflict for the reader.

Character Flow

Characters come and go and come again in this series, usually to the series' benefit. Cardinal introduces us to a critical character, American intelligence super-fixer John Clark; a major character, Russian uber-spy Sergey Golovko; and a handful of third-tier characters we'll see pop up later, like US missile defense genius Major Alan Gregory and Soviet military rising star Colonel Bondarenko (Gregory and Bondarenko both appear in The Bear and the Dragon).  Each of these characters reflect Tom Clancy's deep and abiding love of competence and training, even from bad guys.

Clark and our frenemy Golovko of course have important roles in several future Ryanverse books, but in Cardinal brings back all of our main submarine friends from the Dallas.  Naval history is Clancy's first love, and he manages to bring back Mancuso and Jones even when Jones is no longer in the service; this is not the last of the sub folks.  Even Marko Ramius comes back to play a prominent part, whose inclusion is, to be charitable, less than plausible.  It would have been fun to have Jack run into Ramius at a bar where Marko is buying everybody rounds with his government-funded largess, but including him in an actual mission is a major stretch.

Review

The Cardinal of the Kremlin and Red Rabbit are the most traditional spy novels in the series.  Even so, we are not left without Clancy's trademark attention to technical detail (weapons, organization structures, etc.) His prose had improved and the dialogue is mostly fitting, though we're left with the impression that Clancy spent little time ever talking to actual women, certainly not witnessing conversation between themselves. This book does actually pass the Bechdel test at least once: Ann and Bea exchange spy information in a clothing store.

Cardinal is probably the most soulful entry in the Ryan series.  Filitov's dream conversations with Corporal Romanov, his beloved son-figure deputy that fought alongside him in the tank corps defending against Hitler's invasion, act as the window to his conscience.  The conversations manifest both his guilt and his motivation for his treasonous actions, alternately giving him pause and strengthening his resolve to damage to government he believes has betrayed his country.  The book opens with a character mostly known to us as the Archer, an Afghan freedom fighter who deftly leads his band of men repelling the Soviet invasion.  We learn that he had previously been a math teacher with a family whose life was violently ruined by the Soviet Army, war transforming him into a gifted (if self-trained) hunter of helicopters and planner of small ambushes.  As American intelligence guides him to his next major mission, 

he remains a vivid character experiencing remorse, mercy, doubt, and satisfaction.  

Jack Ryan ties the stories together, but the action in Moscow and along the Afghan border are the emotion center of the novel.  Bondarenko's aspirations, for his career and his country's armed forces, shape the direction of events on the Soviet side of the conflict.  The Archer's desire for revenge and religious fulfillment propel direct the Afghan rebels into action.  With Filitov acting out of his own definition of patriotism and the Foleys working to save him out of loyalty to their agent, our D.C.-based protagonists seem very reactive and secondary to the events of the book, including Jack Ryan.  The CIA storylines are interesting, yet the stories and especially the characters abroad are more compelling.

What About the Movie/TV Show to be Produced by WYNE Media?

Cardinal would make a really compelling character-driven TV season.  Flashbacks for the Archer and Filitov would be Emmy gold, Filitov's vodka dreams would be really moving, the Vatutin interrogations would be terrifying, and the spy stuff would be very exciting.  You could make a cool action movie based on the bare-bones outline of rescuing Filitov and the Soviet/Afghan conflict and cutting out the New Mexico story (not a big loss).  The problem of adapting a book to screenplay is loss of depth, nuance, and detail that enrich story and character; the structures are fundamentally different. An original screenplay can convey all of these things more easily than an adapted screenplay, usually because of a narrower focus and proper structure.

Miscellanea

More fascination with the ascetic aspects of Mormon life: Will Perkins is an excellent FBI counter-intelligence agent, but Clancy makes sure to not that Perkins wouldn't be caught dead with porn.

Constant casual drinking isn't yet an omnipresent feature in the series yet; our drink references primarily reflect Filitov self-medicating before sleep. 

After the attack of the Archer's band is finally stopped and he is killed, his comrade who has Soviet military experience decides that their group will be more effective under his guidance since he has formal training he can pass on.  We are not exaggerating Clancy's obsession with training. 

Clancy Chronologically: The Hunt For Red October

You've been on pins and needles for somebody to review the books your dad was reading when you were in middle school; we're here to help.  Last year, we read all of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan books in order of Ryanverse chronology rather than order of publication (we include the John Clark and Jack Ryan Jr. books in this process).  This year, we're doing it again and posting about each of the books as we complete them/manage to be sufficiently unlazy to actually post a blog.  Your comments are more than welcome. NOTE: POSSIBLE DECADES-OLD SPOILERS!!!

Completely Pointless Information

In selecting the image we use for the blog post, we try to use the same book cover as the one we've read.  This cover is a reminder that once upon a time he wasn't TOM CLANCY, just a dude slingin' insurance at his grandmother-in-law's agency (insert obligatory "with a passion for naval history" reference).

Plot/Subplots

Marko Ramius is a gifted Soviet submarine commander who has been entrusted with leading the USSR's new crown jewel of undersea defense, The Red October.  The sub is the peak of Soviet military engineering and becomes the tool of his revenge against his corrupt government: he's going to steal it and give it to the Americans.  Having hand picked a group of officers of a similar mind, he races off to the West before he can be discovered.

Analyst Jack Ryan continues his meteoric rise up the ranks of CIA's intelligence directorate. Shuttling between his temporary home in England and CIA headquarters, Jack is the first to sniff out that the Soviet nuclear submarine is not on a sanctioned mission but is in fact defecting.  Given his connections with the better-positioned British and as the main character, Jack is thrust into action to help Ramius safely achieve his designs.

Character Notes

Tom Clancy always liked to add little dashes of story to his characters, but Marko Ramius is one of the few who really get an extended back story.  The description of his past does a great job of informing his motivation and how he could have pulled off the sub heist attempt in the first place.

For a main character, Jack is barely in this book.  Our attention is fairly evenly distributed among CIA, various U.S. vessels, The Red October, and the Soviet government. We learn very little about Jack himself except for his fear of flying, his bluntness, and his ceaseless formality.

Review

The Hunt for Red October was written as Tom Clancy's best effort to stop selling insurance and actually write for a living, and the work shows through.  The details are meticulous and the writing is enthusiastic.  It's not as smooth as his later works, but Clancy earned a degree in English, and his training is evident.  The skipping from location to location feels kinetic and not choppy.  Many readers are put off by what they may consider overly lengthy descriptions of machines and processes (we're not keen ourselves), but these passages add to the realism of the stories.  With this book, if Clancy didn't invent the techno-thriller, he made it mainstream.

On an emotional level, a unique issue THFRO addresses is how the machinery of state and cultural engineering affected people personally (it's addressed even better in The Cardinal of the Kremlin). Official atheism deprives Marko Ramius of mechanisms for coping with grief available in religion; institutional Russo-centrism diminishes his opportunities as a Lithuanian despite his impeccable record; nepotism and corruption prevent justice being enforced on the malfeasant doctor who took his wife's life.  The emotional resonance of his story isn't matched in other characters, who tend to be admirable and/or interesting, but don't connect with the reader in the same way.  The book is an outstanding debut and a template for what made Tom Clancy great.

The Movie

The film version was the third great movie in a row directed by John McTiernan: Predator, Die Hard, and Red October.  Very nice work, John McTiernan! (We'll ignore that his work included Last Action Hero and Rollerball.)

We understand that given the political climate at the time, it was unlikely to have a lot of Soviet actors available, but the casting of Russians who have more than a couple of lines is fairly hilarious: a Scot, an Aussie (dude from Jurassic Park), a few Brits, and a Swede.  They probably should have not bothered to have anybody speak (terrible) Russian rather than using the device "now that we're zooming out, all of the Russkies speak English."  Alec Baldwin is way too smooth to be the Jack Ryan of the books, but the performance is good.  If you were to take this to mini-series, the Soviet side of the story could be more authentic and dwell more on Marko's drive and planning.  A solid movie altogether, but it'll be a better season in our anthology series.

The music in the movie is awesome:

Miscellanea

Tom Clancy's first reference in his continuing interest in the more ascetic aspects of Mormon lifestyle: Dr. Randall Tait eschews anything with caffeine, "though this type of self-discipline was unusual for a physician, to say nothing of a uniformed officer, he scarcely thought about it except on rare occasions when he pointed out its longevity benefits to his brother practitioners."

Apparently Clancy wasn't living the good life quite yet: the book contains relatively few references to coffee or alcohol, none to beef, but 20 or so references to smoking.

Clancy loves him some Texas and the University of Texas.  Arthur Moore and Bob Ritter are Texans, and Lt. Earl Butler is the first of a number of Longhorns in the Ryanverse.

The Hunt For Red October sets up the next two books Ryanverse beautifully (in real world chronology - and yes, Red Storm Rising, a work not within the scope of what we're covering). Reference is made to Jack's heroism later covered by Patriot Games and to the CIA's effort to penetrate the Soviet government, to be covered in the next blog post. 

Hunt was originally published by printing behemoth Naval Institute Press.  President Ronald Reagan loved it and mentioned it in a Time Magazine article, which was the beginning of Tom Clancy's ascent into fame.  It didn't hurt that the well-spoken-of president in the books is an unnamed but thinly veiled Reagan.  Clancy remained grateful to the President throughout his life.

Clancy Chronologically: Red Rabbit

You've been on pins and needles for somebody to review the books your dad was reading when you were in middle school; we're here to help.  Last year, we read all of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan books in order of Ryanverse chronology rather than order of publication (we include the John Clark and Jack Ryan Jr. books in this process).  This year, we're doing it again and posting about each of the books as we complete them/manage to be sufficiently unlazy to actually post a blog.  Your comments are more than welcome. NOTE: POSSIBLE DECADES-OLD SPOILERS!!!

Why Red Rabbit?

You may have noticed that Tom Clancy enjoyed the Cold War and was fascinated by the Soviets. Published in 2002, the book was probably written before the terrorist attacks of 9/11 which would alter the course of the later Ryan books.  From a character standpoint, it details Jack Ryan's time in London after the events of Patriot Games but before his submarine adventures. Red Rabbit showcases two previously undersung Ryanverse heroes, Ed and Mary Pat Foley (who isn't even Irish Catholic).  If you didn't get enough of the "Soviet government employee decides his government sucks and betrays them" plot device from The Hunt for Red October and The Cardinal of the Kremlin, then this is the book for you.

Plot/Subplots

Already a hero in Britain for having saved the Prince and Princess, up-and-coming star CIA analyst Jack Ryan is lent to the British SIS Soviet group. While wowing his colleagues with his keen analysis, surprising wealth, and being way more important to Britain than they'll ever be, Irish part-time Catholic Jack learns that the Pope has written a dangerous letter to the Soviet leadership.  The Pope (only known by the name "Karol" in the book, never John Paul II) threatens to resign if the Soviets don't let his native Poland have more freedoms, siding with the Solidarity movement.  As Jack supposes, the Soviets decide to take out the political nuisance Karol.  KGB communications specialist Oleg Zaitzev is disturbed by this plot; he attempts to reach out to the CIA and secure safe passage to the West in exchange for his information.  Can the good guys act in time to save the Pope?

This plot is totally crazy and implausible, right?  Kill the Pope?
Right?

These Russian Babes are Pretty Beefy, amirite?

It's hard to escape references to how chunky Russian women are: 

On Zaitzev buying pantyhose for his lady: "'My wife is a real Russian,' he replied, meaning decidedly not anorexic."  We are impressed with the precision of the measurements.

On Zaitzev learning of his wife's bra purchase: "Those of Soviet manufacture always seemed to be designed for peasant girls who suckled calves instead of children - far too big for a woman of his wife's more human proportions."

On (Russian-American) Mary Pat's hotness compared to the Russian fatties: "Like a peacock among crows, her husband liked to say...She could not change her figure much - the local aesthetic preferred women of her height to be about ten kilograms heavier...Whatever, the level of fashion for the average Russian female was like something from a Dead End Kids movie." 

Rare picture of Tom Clancy not in his trademark aviator shades

Review

Our paperback edition of Red Rabbit comes in at 636 pages, which is short for a Clancy book, but could easily be trimmed by 200 pages.  While Clancy books are usually larded up with lengthy descriptions of weapons and war machines, Rabbit is stuffed with repetitive pangs of conscience and self-questioning by Zaitzev.  Various characters having identical reactions to the potential assassination of the Pope along the lines of "I'm not a Catholic, but killing a priest is wrong" or "I'm not much of a Catholic, but even I know that this is wrong" or "I worship Satan, but even I adore the way JP2 rocks the hat and scepter."

Rabbit largely lacks an essential quality in a spy thriller: suspense.  While Zaitzev gets nervous that he hasn't contacted an American who can actually help him and the Foleys worry about the operation, the stories reek of inevitability.  Even the assassination attempt falls flat; the book discusses it dozens of times, but when we get to that point, we've spent more time reading about radios and positioning to prevent the incident than the actual incident.  The plot to get the Zaitzev family to the West is clever, but too much space is consumed repetitively discussing the details and there is little sense of jeopardy during the escape attempt.  Mrs. Zaitzev isn't even told that they're defecting until they're in Hungary. Oleg assures the CIA previously that it'll be fine, she'll do what she's told; it happens just like that. Mrs. Zaitzev has about three lines of dialogue in the whole book.  The novelty of having the Foleys in a major role is undercut by constant descriptions of Mary Pat as the cowboy type and Ed as the worry-wart administration type.  Tension between them is never mined for any real drama (keeping in mind virtually every married woman in the Ryanverse is a Saint and is always right).

Red Rabbit has a lot of good and entertaining elements - the assassination conspiracy is fascinating (and based on historical events and conspiracy theories around them) and the spycraft details are compelling and well-executed.  It's a collection of good ideas connected by underwhelming writing.

What About the Movie/TV Show to be Produced by WYNE Media?

If you wanted to add some depth, it could be a very entertaining mini-series; it wouldn't be hard to add some marital conflict and more tension in the Zaitzev escape, include some actual debate within the Russian leadership, and cut out all of the repetitiveness.  As it stands, it would make a stellar movie, like a Bourne film with more purpose and direction.  Considering how much Vlad Putin behaves like fictional Soviet leadership, it could be a very timely retro movie. 

Miscellanea

19 references to vodka, 18 to wine, 30 to coffee (including the phase "they didn't know beans about coffee"), 5 to beef/steak (including a Brit admitting that American beef is better), 17 to tea (drunk exclusively by Brits except for Zaitzev, the defector).

"I serve the Soviet Union" is a frequent refrain between the KGB employees in the book.  A former coworker and I would say this to each other at least daily to mock our employer.  Why did I get laid off from that company?

Herein a character is named Dominic Corso and one with the name Hendley.  These names are recycled as Dominic Caruso and Gerry Hendley later on in the Campus-based books.

Clancy Chronologically: Patriot Games

You've been on pins and needles for somebody to review the books your dad was reading when you were in middle school; we're here to help.  Last year, we read all of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan books in order of Ryanverse chronology rather than order of publication (we include the John Clark and Jack Ryan Jr. books in this process).  This year, we're doing it again and posting about each of the books as we complete them/manage to be sufficiently unlazy to actually post a blog.  Your comments are more than welcome. NOTE: POSSIBLE DECADES-OLD SPOILERS!!!

Plot/Subplots
Tom Clancy hadn't quite developed his fifty-seemingly-divergent-plots-converge-in-one style yet, so this one is fairly straightforward: Jack Ryan is vacationing with his family/doing research in London when he reflexively thwarts a violent attack.  It just so happens the attack is by an IRA spin-off group on royals Charles and Diana (never actually named, just like Reagan in the early Ryan books), so Ryan becomes a hero to the British and at target of the terrorists.  After an attack on his family, Ryan finally accepts CIA's invitation to join them and hunt down his enemies.

Beef with the Brits
As you'll recall, Clancy books process all cultural understanding through food, drink, and a handful of native phrases.  He respects the Brits and even their food, except these clods cannot cook beef to save their lives. This the first of many references to beef in the Ryanverse. These Brits are also constantly drinking tea like a bunch of pansies (soccer is also for girls).  Given Clancy's obsession with coffee, alcohol, smoking, and beef, I began wondering if his premature (and of undisclosed cause) death had something to do with these substances.   Per the Tom Clancy Wikipedia entry, one of his associates agrees with my speculation: "John D. Gresham, a co-author and researcher with Clancy on several books, attributed Clancy's death to heart problems: 'Five or six years ago Tom suffered a heart attack and he went through bypass surgery. It wasn't that he had another heart attack, [his heart] just wore out.'"

Bad Guys
The enemy in this book is the Ulster Liberation Army, which is to the IRA like ISIS is to Al Qaeda. Their leader, Sean Miller, is a trained and committed badass, but is crazily hung up on getting revenge on Jack.  His professionalism and skill cannot compete with Jack's luck and the fact that Jack is going to be in the next book.  As Marxists, the ULA overcome their racism to hook up with an African American Marxist terror cell to handle the logistics of their US attacks.  But perhaps the most nefarious opponent is Dennis Cooley, the antique book dealer/terror cell signals man who later joins the actual combat so he can be neatly wrapped up later.  Bad guys don't tend to go to jail in the Ryanverse.  The title of the book is contained in a speech by Jack's BFF Robby Jackson, which also sums up Clancy's feelings toward non-uniformed combatants: " They're playing a game, Jack.  There's even a song about it.  I heard it at Riordan's on St. Patrick's Day. 'I've learned all my heroes and wanted the same/To try out my hand at the patriot game.'  Something like that.  War isn't a game, it's a profession.  They play their little games, and call themselves patriots, and go out and kill little kids.  Bastards...I don't much like the Russians, but the boys that fly the bears know their stuff.  We know our stuff, and both sides respect the other.  There's rules, and both sides play by 'em.  That's the way it's supposed to be."  Honor goes to the professional, the trained man who has worked hard, honed his abilities, and plays by agreed-upon rules; the unprofessional and disorderly are worthy only of elimination.

Review
Action in Patriot Games is as you'd expect: crisp, detailed, and exciting.  The book starts off with a bang, then slooooooooows dooooooooown. There are about 100 pages of this: Jack recovering uncomfortably in the hospital. Jack chews out The Prince, but then feels uncomfortable about it. Jack uncomfortably attends royal parties and uncomfortably receives royal honors. Cathy and little Sally are super comfortable being lavished with attention and special treatment when they're not shopping (babes love their shopping and luxuries!) and don't understand why Jack doesn't just chill the hell out.  They see the sights of London before Ryan uncomfortably flies back to the USA, where he can finally get a decent steak, but it isn't as uncomfortable because they're on a Concorde flight.

Sean Miller being broken out of prison also frees the book from that dull stretch.  Clancy presents realistic scenarios for how the organizations work (CIA, ULA, British intelligence, etc.) and how they interact.  The characters still don't sound like human beings, but when weapons are out, all is well.  Ryan's self-flagellating inner monologue is one of the few character-building tools Tom Clancy employs, but it tends to repeat itself.  In the end, training and coordination prevail over any other factors.  The author is a great lover of process - professional training, formal education, craftsmanship in assembling weapons, experience in preparing meals) - and it shows in his characters and how he steers plots.  If you read this (or any of his books) as a popcorn movie with flashes of nerdy attention to detail, it's an entertaining read.

What About the Movie?
The movie actually does a good job of trimming the fat of the book.  Replacing "The Prince" with "Lord Holmes" doesn't serve to make the plot any less outlandish and probably undermines the urgency of the conflict.  Sean Bean is well-cast and while Harrison Ford is too old for Jack Ryan at that stage of his life and career, he's a great fit for Ryan's combination of sharp mind and everyman approach to life.  We prefer Sean Miller's fate in the book, which is telling of Jack's character, but we're never against a boat explosion in a movie.

Miscellanea
While in order of publication The Hunt for Red October technically introduces Jack's BFF Robby Jackson first, Patriot Games is his real debut.
21 references to coffee, 21 references to beer, 20 references to drinks, 7 references to wine, and of course the remarks about beef.  R.I.P., Tom. (Note to self: eat a salad tonight)
Anne Archer is really boring as Cathy in the movie.