The Verdict on Tom Clancy

 

[minor spoilers]

 

Ten days ago I finished my Tom Clancy project.

It took me five months – March 14 to August 12 – to read through nine of his novels, eight of which I read nearly thirty years ago as a young impressionable lad.

Was it worth it?

Yes.

I’ve written in quite a few places in these here electronic pages how my first encounter with Tom Clancy’s storytelling had opened me up to a whole new world. Up to this time I’d primarily read paperback SF, King and Koontz horror novels, Tolkien and the occasional fantasy work. Plus, I was only getting back into reading having pretty much ended at that point an 8-year “career” playing in several bands to lesser and lesser success.

In the fall of 1994, purely on a whim, I picked up The Sum of All Fears (1991) and was immediately captured. By the summer of 1996 I had put away seven more of his books, the last of which, Executive Orders, I had bought as a first edition paperback while it was still on the bestseller lists.

What is this world of the “military techno-thriller” I just entered? Sure, I watched the movies with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford (that’s probably why I picked up the book in the first place), but I never experienced something along the lines of a Clancy novel.

What do I mean?

Well, the literati and the auteurs scoff at him, and to a certain extent these snobs are correct. When you read a Tom Clancy book, you ain’t getting the prose of a Steinbeck, Faulkner or Hemingway. You’re not reading a potential finalist for the Pulitzer in Drama. What you pick up a Clancy novel for is, well, the pro-American angle, the love of the military, the love of excellence, the ultimate triumph of good over evil. More specifically, the spycraft, the military tech and nomenclature, the intense detail of every major plot device, from a home-made nuclear weapon to a manufactured biological weapon to computerized lasers that melt satellites in orbit to the machinations of the stock market to the ancient historical traditions of England (now sadly threatened) and to the sausage factory that is American political life – the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Press.

It's like an Ian Fleming novel tossed in with the Wall Street Journal and shipped to boot camp at Parris Island.

Each novel I re-read averaged around 650 or 700 pages in hardcover (The Hunt for Red October, his first novel, being the shortest, and Executive Orders, the last of the ones I read, published in 1996, being the longest). At the rate I was reading I was putting one away every three weeks, at about 35 pages a day. Most days the pages flew by. Often I surprised myself by reading over a hundred pages, particularly as I neared the ends of certain novels. Most built to a very satisfying climax that made it hard to put the book down.

It brought out the nostalgia for me. I remembered those care-free days reading these books as a single young guy in his own apartment with no cares and no real responsibilities and no bills. Yet it brought out a deeper nostalgia for me, and a sad one. Sad that the America of these Tom Clancy books (published 1984 to 1996) no longer exists. That America featured brave, competent, courageous men and women fighting evil without distraction or distinction, evil both taking root in American society and flourishing out in the world.

Tom was not afraid to take on Islamic terrorism, Japanese imperialism, political machinations at home, and especially Soviet communism and other examples of Marxism throughout the world. He knew not the words “politically correct.” Perversions were not to be celebrated. Men were men and women were women. I am not sure he could be published today as a first-time novelist.

Each novel seemed to grow longer in page count. Each novel grew more “Bondian” – more and more nefarious schemes were hatched by evildoers of varying stripes. Each novel seemed more grandiose as the series went on. In The Hunt for Red October, Jack Ryan doesn’t even appear in the first 20 percent of the novel, and when he does he’s a junior CIA analyst new at the job who doesn’t quite know if he’s taken seriously. Yet in the last book I read [MAJOR SPOILER!!!] Jack is now the president, picking up the debris of the American government left decapitated after an act of terrorism destroys the House and Senate.

There weren’t too many anachronistic goofs in my re-reading. I did have to chuckle in Patriot Games when Jack is bragging about having a home PC, complete with floppy disks and a modem Clancy describes in excruciating detail. He also writes of a “Korea” as if unified. But overall the books all hold up from a technical point of view, if not a sociological perspective.

Though I recommend any of the following, here is my personal ranking, from A+++ to merely an A:

   The Sum of All Fears

   Executive Orders

   Clear and Present Danger

   The Cardinal of the Kremlin

   Without Remorse

   The Hunt for Red October

   Debt of Honor

   Red Rabbit

   Patriot Games

 

My memory of the plot scenarios was about 80% accurate. Some details I remembered to be major, such as the assassination of a Saddam Hussein character, were only a two or three page mini-chapter at best. At least one unique fate for a character was inadvertently remembered as happening to another. An act of selfless compassion I thought happened in The Sum of All Fears did not in fact happen at all save for a throwaway line suggesting it. Oh well. Memory is fallible, after all. I think someone said that once.

Too many memorable scenes to describe (and this post is getting lengthy), but for those who may have read the books and can agree or disagree, here are some that stayed with me from three decades ago:

 

- Two of the deaths in Without Remorse (one involving a decompression chamber and another the choice between a knife in the ribs or a self-administered drug overdose)

- The sad and horrific death of Sister Jean Baptiste in Executive Orders (almost made me put the book down for good)

- Clancy’s pre-prediction of 9/11 with the denouement of Debt of Honor

- The unique sensory-deprivation torture of Svetlana in The Cardinal of the Kremlin

- The wrong-place wrong-time deaths of Fromm’s wife and the Russian detective in Sum

- The incompetent bravado of sub commander Harry Ricks, also from Sum

 

Yet all is not murder and mayhem. Traitors and villains may throw wrenches and worse at our heroes struggling to save the day and preserve freedom, but they all get their comeuppance, eventually, even 900 pages later. Some “villains” I grew to like, such as Colonel Bondarenko and Marshall Filitov of The Cardinal of the Kremlin, others I despised with a passion, such as Elizabeth Elliot from Sum and Dr. Moudi and the Ayatollah Daryaei from Orders.

Verdict: Very pleased and satisfied I re-read all the books; I enjoyed about 95 percent of the experience (the submarine and aircraft battles can get a little tedious, especially when combatants aren’t given personalities or at least names). A fitting end to a chapter in my life as I probably won’t revisit them again, nor do I have a current desire to read any modern-day ghost-written Clancys or Clancy-imitators. It was fun and nostalgic, and I’d recommend any of them, particularly Sum, Executive Orders, Clear and Present Danger, and Cardinal.

 

Addendum:

Best Film Adaptation – The Hunt for Red October

Worst Film Adaptation – The Sum of All Fears

Do not, under any circumstances, see the Sum of All Fears movie. I beg of you. Just don’t.

Similarly, do not see the Without Remorse movie out on the streaming services.

The John Krasinski Jack Ryan series is okay (at least, the first two seasons), but it’s not Clancy.

Finally, Harrison Ford is Jack Ryan. Not Alec Baldwin, not John Krasinski, and certainly not Ben Affleck.