Clear and Present Danger

Tom Clan­cy nov­els’ strengths and weak­ness­es are pret­ty much the same. Depend­ing on where you’re com­ing from, end­less minute details of mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy and cul­ture can be fas­ci­nat­ing or tedious. While this was turned into one of the stronger of the Jack Ryan movies, the nov­el itself did­n’t hold togeth­er all that well. The tech­nol­o­gy was all there, but even the char­ac­ters reg­u­lar read­ers have come to know and love seemed dead and two-dimensional. 

In Hunt for Red Octo­ber, Clan­cy devel­oped the Jack Ryan char­ac­ter. He was­n’t exact­ly the same at the end of the nov­el as he was at the begin­ning. In Clear and Present Dan­ger, even the char­ac­ters that are new to the read­ers are pre­sent­ed as famil­iar sta­t­ic types. Some are to be admired and can do no wrong, some do wrong, but aww shucks it’s OK because they’re heroes by nature of being in the mil­i­tary, yet oth­ers do wrong and are bad because they are dis­grac­ing the mil­i­tary by doing wrong. Yet nev­er are there any con­se­quences that move the char­ac­ters along or cause them to mod­i­fy their own behav­ior. Each has a role which is played out rather predictably. 

Yet, you know, it’s Tom Clan­cy. It’s an all-day suck­er, a book that kept my inter­est and just kept going and going. So while dis­ap­point­ing in com­par­i­son to some oth­ers of Clan­cy’s nov­els, it did its job and kept me enter­tained. In the end it’s for­get­table, but while I read it, it kept my atten­tion nicely. 

Clear and Present Dan­ger, Tom Clancy 

5/10

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Put­nam Hard­cov­er, 1989 

656 pages