Clear and Present Entertainment

My recent re-watching of The Hunt for Red October left me craving some more Tom Clancy. In high school, I read and owned all the Jack Ryan novels, Patriot Games clear through to Executive Orders, as well as the Mr. Clark backstory Without Remorse. I also read the second Mr. Clark novel, Rainbow Six, and stopped there. Then I moved away, left my books in a closet, and chances are high I'll never see them again. But that's what libraries are for!

My favourite of the Jack Ryan novels is, obviously, Clear and Present Danger, set between Red October and The Sum of All Fears. A drug war story involving Army special operatives and Latin American drug lords, rough sailors and foolish politicos, and introducing Mr. Clark in his first big role after his small but key appearance in The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Clear and Present Danger finds Jack Ryan starting to take over Admiral Greer's responsibilites as the CIA's Deputy Director (Intelligence) as the Admiral is in the final stages of death by cancer. Provoked by both a heinous crime and an election year, the President, NSA, and heads of the CIA and FBI set up an operation so black only they and the operatives involved know about it - or so they believe. Said operation involves a new special ops team composed of Rangers, Green Berets, and other bests-of-the-best being dropped in the Colombian mountains to send some large and pointed messages to the drug cartel at their points of production and distribution. It's a thoroughly illegal operation, and one Jack is deliberately kept out of the loop on, until a combination of leaks and military men who aren't stupid, plus the assassination of the FBI's director, gradually blows the operation's cover. Things start to go wrong on the Colombian end, and when the NSA pulls out the team's air support and severs their radio connections, Mr. Clark approaches Jack for help getting them out. And so on and so forth.

Re-reading Clear and Present Danger for the first time in nearly a decade, I was quickly reminded why I enjoy Tom Clancy so much. His books are light reads, full of simple stories and archetypal, characters, but his consistency - not to mention plenty of fun technical detail - is what makes them work and keeps them interesting. Clear and Present Danger is populated with familiar, one-dimensional characters - we have the drug cartel's boss, Escobedo, the arrogant fool whose arrogance and foolishness will be his undoing, and Cortez, the suave and cunning second banana who really runs the show. We have National Security Advisor Admiral Cutter, the highly-placed buffoon in charge of field operations he has no experience with or understanding of, and CIA director Bob Ritter, the smart and experienced subordinate hobbled by his superior's bad decisions. We have Domingo "Ding" Chavez, the tough but smart kid from the L.A. barrio who joined the Army to avoid imminent arrest or gang-related death and quickly applied himself to be one of the finest graduates the Ranger school has ever seen. We have...you get the picture. Even the "deep" characters like Mr. Clark are very straightforward. And then, there's Jack Ryan, who defies existing action-hero/political thriller stereotypes as that rarest of literary creatures, the academic who understands and respects the military. What makes them all work is the fact that Clancy is consistent with each and every one of his characters. They have very rigid, clearly defined roles, and they all stick to them, not doing anything out of place with their character types. It sounds boring when I explain it like this, but it's actually what makes the books engaging, interesting, and fun instead of irritating, pretentious, and stupid.

Random content advisory: Clancy's soldiers and sailors swear like, well, soldiers and sailors, and quite frequently, too. If salty language, even in context, troubles you, these are not the books for you. Also, he doesn't sanitize violence.

If you've pondered watching the film Clear and Present Danger, my advice is: don't, especially if you've already read the book. The casting is pretty sketchy, and for a character-driven story, that's rarely a good thing. I like Harrison Ford, and I really like Willem Dafoe, but I don't like either of them as Jack Ryan or Mr. Clark, respectively. Also, it's just a very so-so picture. The book, on the other hand, is a tad long but well-conceived and enjoyable. If you're one of those people who likes to set aside the summer as a time for light reading, this is a good pick, and may even leave you wanting to read the rest of the series. If you do that, just be sure to read them in order, because from here to Executive Orders is one story arc. And no, Op Center, Splinter Cell, etc. are not part of that series, nor are they good. But Rainbow Six is.