War III by threatening to use nuclear weapons against the Soviets inThe Sum of All Fears. Individual politicians may have vision and competence, but most of Clancy’s are simply concerned with keeping their offices at any cost. In Executive Orders, when his protagonist, Jack Ryan, becomes president after a terrorist attack kills the incumbent president, Ryan appoints successful businessmen as his close advisers because, unlike self-serving politicians, they have amassed great fortunes while serving the common good through their private enterprise accomplishments. Although Clancy’s books are populated by military figures, his alter ego in his novels is Jack Ryan, a civilian. Ryan, who has a doctorate in history and has made a small fortune in the stock market, saves the heir to the British throne in Patriot Games, becomes a consultant to the CIA and the national security adviser, and finally ascends to the presidency itself. Ryan is not a superman—he has a fear of flying and a weakness for cigarettes—but in the convoluted plots of Clancy’s books, Ryan is forced into the world of terror and war. He then becomes the man who, in Clancy’s phrase, gets the job done.

Ryan is not the leading figure in all Clancy’s books; however, he is the thread that ties the many subplots and numerous characters together. Clancy’s works can thus be read as a whole. Not only Ryan but many other figures also appear and reappear, sometimes as major characters, other times in smaller parts. A character such as John Clark plays only a small—although crucial—role in The Cardinal of the Kremlin, but he has a much larger part in Clear and Present Danger and the lead role in Without Remorse.

Reviewers have criticized the lack of character development in Clancy’s novels. While the dialogue is generally satisfying, many of his characters are indeed one-dimensional figures. Clancy is writing largely about desperate crises; action, not introspection, is perhaps expected. The character of Ryan, however, does evolve from novel to novel. By the time that The Sum of All Fears was published in 1991, Ryan was in his forties, working too hard at the CIA, neglecting his family, worrying about his inability to take his young son to a baseball game, and drinking too much. Even his marriage seemed in danger. The centrality of the family is an underlying theme in Clancy’s works; Ryan’s own family is the model modern family.

The ultimate crisis of Patriot Games sees Ryan defending his family and home from a terrorist assault. The family personifies and preserves the moral and religious values crucial to society. It is a deeply conservative and traditional view that is undoubtedly related to the author’s middle-class Catholic background; that synthesis of traditional values with the latest technology and the threat of total war explains his great popularity.

The Hunt for Red October

First published: 1984

Type of work: Novel

A Soviet submarine captain attempts to defect to the United States.

Clancy’s first published novel, The Hunt for Red October, became a runaway best seller. Writing at a time of heightened Cold War tensions, Clancy touched a deep chord. Soviet submarine captain Mark Ramius is disillusioned by the communist system and the Soviet state. His wife, a former ballerina, died on an operating table at the hands of a drunken doctor who, because of his Communist Party connections, was not punished for his misdeed. The leading Soviet expert in submarine tactics, Ramius decides to defect to the United States.

A number of themes common to Clancy’s work appear in The Hunt for Red October. His knowledge of submarine technology and tactics carries the reader into an underwater world that, because of the technological framework, seems more fact than fiction. The Soviets do not want a nuclear war, but they might resort to war to recapture Ramius and his submarine, and power divorced from morality could well destroy the world. Ramius, driven by family feelings and moral considerations, transcends a system that has proved to be an evil failure.

On the other side is Jack Ryan, a consultant to the CIA. Because he is only a professor of history, he lacks the authority government office might give him; he is neither a high-ranking military figure nor a politician. Ryan is an Everyman who is willing and able to do what is necessary. Eventually, Ryan boards the Red October and is forced to kill a committed young communist who has been ordered to sink the submarine rather than have it fall into American hands. Although his submarine is damaged, Ramius sails his ship into an American port. Ryan has received an education in the necessity of using power, political and military, to maintain the good society: It is not enough merely to write about history.

As in all of his stories, Clancy brings together a number of subplots and numerous major and minor characters. Even if the politicians are not always dependable, the officers and men of the military invariably excel. Well trained and motivated, they work together for the greater good of their unit and their country. Clancy makes numerous comparisons between the Soviet system and the freedoms to be found in the West. The book is not so much a story of “good guys” and “bad guys” as a contest between a system that has failed and one that, in spite of individual human weaknesses, is the last best hope of humankind.

Patriot Games

First published: 1987

Type of work: Novel

A young American historian runs afoul of Irish terrorists after foiling their attack upon the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Because of its success as a film, Patriot Games is one of Clancy’s best-known novels. He began writing it before The Hunt for Red October, but it was not published until after his second hit novel, Red Storm Rising (1986). Patriot Games, however, relates the earliest part of Jack Ryan’s fictional biography. Clancy has admitted that in creating Ryan he has projected an idealized version of himself.

In a departure from his other novels, in Patriot Games technology plays only a secondary role. The story opens in London. Ryan and his family are enjoying a working vacation; his wife and daughter sightsee and shop while he researches his next work of history. At the end of the day, Ryan meets his family in a peaceful London park, but an explosion a few yards away aborts the plans for a pleasant evening. A radical Irish republican faction of dedicated Marxists has just attacked the automobile carrying the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Ryan, a former Marine officer, reacts instinctively, killing one terrorist and disarming another. Ryan himself is shot. For his heroism, he is given an honorary knighthood. The terrorists vow revenge, however, and eventually attack Ryan and his family after they have returned to the United States.

There are fewer subplots than in Clancy’s other novels; Ryan remains the focus of the work. While still in a London hospital recovering from his wounds, Ryan is visited by the Prince of Wales, who feels guilty that he was unable to personally protect his wife. In American fashion, Ryan bucks up the prince, giving him renewed confidence in himself. In Patriot Games the importance of the family and all that it represents takes center place. The Windsors, who later visit the Ryans’ home for dinner while on a tour to the United States, are presented as holding the same values and morals as Ryan and his wife, Cathy. They might be royalty, but underneath they are just like the people next door. In contrast, the terrorists, rootless and homeless and driven by perverted philosophies and blind hatreds, lack those necessary societal values. Clancy—and Ryan—are Irish Americans, but neither has any sympathy for radical Irish terrorists.

Clancy has the ability to touch the concerns of his readers. Cold War fears and the threats of terrorism were headline issues and events when his novels appeared. In Patriot Games, he capitalized on America’s fascination with Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana. With Everyman Jack Ryan becoming a knighted hero battling ruthless villains, the novel was guaranteed to be a best seller and a hit film.

The Sum of All Fears

First published: 1991

Type of work: Novel

An international terrorist group explodes a nuclear device during the Super Bowl.

One of the strengths of Clancy’s novels is their timeliness. The Sum of All Fears, published in 1991, reflects the immediate post-Cold War world. The Berlin Wall has fallen; the Soviet Union is no more. Yet the world is not necessarily safer. New tensions and old rivalries have replaced superpower antagonisms. International terrorism is obviously not new—Clancy himself wrote about it in Patriot Games—but without the restraining influence of the Cold War, terrorism could well pose a greater threat than in the past.

Ryan has risen to a position of authority in the CIA. Unfortunately, the new president, Jonathan Robert Fowler, a liberal, and his national security adviser, Elizabeth Elliot, a leftist academic, see such agencies as the CIA as incompetent and as relics of history that can be ignored. Ryan, who is not a politician, does little to avoid alienating Fowler and Elliot. The conservative Clancy holds no brief for their liberal politics, but even worse than their politics is their lack of morality. When Fowler and Elliot become lovers, it becomes obvious to the reader that they are destined to be Ryan’s foes.

In The Sum of All Fears, the terrorists are a mixed group of German Marxists, radical Muslims, and an American Indian. Each has different motives, but all are wedded to ideologies foreign to Western values and institutions. As in most of Clancy’s novels, technology plays a key role. The technological focus revolves around an Israeli nuclear weapon lost during the 1973 war with Syria. Rediscovered years later in a farmer’s garden, the rebuilt weapon is secretly shipped to the United States, trucked to Denver, and explodes during the Super Bowl game.

In the aftermath, President Fowler loses control of himself, almost declaring war on the Soviets, whom he suspects of setting off the device. When it is learned that the plot originated in the Middle East, possibly at the instigation of an Iranian Muslim cleric, Fowler issues the order to bomb the cleric’s hometown, the holy city of Qum, an act that would kill tens of thousands of innocent people. At the crucial point, Ryan steps in and vetoes the presidential order, and the vice president replaces Fowler. Although thousands have died in Denver, a world conflagration is narrowly avoided.

In this novel, Clancy brings together all the themes that make his books so popular. There is the struggle between good and evil. Technology is central to the story. The threat of nuclear weapons, a fear since the end of World War II, is shown to be a potential reality. Eternal vigilance is necessary, and someone must do what is required in spite of all obstacles. In the course of The Sum of All Fears, Ryan, driving himself too hard at work, almost destroys his own family through drink and inattention. At the end, he puts his family at the center of his life and resigns from the CIA. Someone must do the job, but the human costs can be high.

Executive Orders

First published: 1996

Type of work: Novel

Unexpectedly assuming the presidency, Ryan faces an international attempt to bring down the United States through the use of biological terror weapons, orchestrated by the Ayatollah of Iran.

In Debt of Honor (1994), in an event in which art anticipates eventual reality, a deranged Japanese terrorist crashes a 747 into the Capitol, killing the president, all of the members of the Supreme Court, as well as most members of Congress. In Executive Orders, Jack Ryan, who had been sworn in as vice president after the resignation of the elected vice president (who was accused of sexual battery), survives the destruction and assumes the presidency. This is an office that he did not desire, but as a patriot, he accepted the responsibility. Ryan guides the creation of a new national government, while facing numerous challenges, both domestic and international.

The Ayatollah Daryaei, the radical Islamic leader of Iran, arranges for the assassination of neighboring Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, and quickly unifies Iran and Iraq in the United Islamic Republic. Daryaei’s long-term goal is to invade and capture Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and create a single Islamic state throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. An outbreak of Ebola fever in Africa allows Daryaei’s clique to develop Ebola as a terror weapon, importing it secretly into the United States in aerosol shaving cream cans, which are eventually released simultaneously into the air in convention halls in many American cities. The same Iranian group also plots to kidnap Ryan’s youngest daughter from her preschool and possibly kill her, as well as to have a secret service bodyguard, a Muslim, assassinate Ryan himself. In typical Clancy fashion, the convoluted but page-turning plot also involves the prime minister of India and officials from the People’s Republic of China, who support the Iranians in a concerted attempt to weaken the United States, the world’s sole superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A no-nonsense, nonpolitical president, Ryan leads the American counterattack, but in Executive Orders, it is a different Ryan than readers are used to. As president, Ryan is at the center, making the decisions and giving the orders, but those orders are carried out by others, many of whom are characters from previous Clancy novels, such as John Clark. Ryan himself is largely a passive figure, complaining about having to deal with politicians and wasting time and energy in what he considers irrelevant matters, and, in Hamlet-fashion, worrying about his abilities and responsibilities. However, good again triumphs over evil. The kidnapping attempt fails; the Ebola attack, which Ryan interprets as a weapon of mass destruction, kills only a few thousand Americans instead of the massive numbers hoped for by Daryaei; and the assassination attempt is foiled. Daryaei’s United Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq invades neighboring Saudi Arabia, but backed by the technology and expertise of a relatively small American military contingent, the invasion fails, thus ending the “Second Persian Gulf War.” Issuing an executive order, Ryan orders the death of Daryaei, accomplished by a single missile attack on the Ayatollah’s residence in Tehran.

The Bear and the Dragon

First published: 2000

Type of work: Novel

When the People’s Republic of China invades Russia in the quest for oil and gold, President Ryan supports the Russians.

Ryan, the nonpartisan citizen president, has been reelected, but his negative attitude toward career and typical politicians has not softened. His major advisers, the secretaries of the treasury and defense, are wealthy self-made businessmen, who bring their private enterprise acumen to their departments. Early in the novel, a Japanese American secret CIA agent, whose cover is selling Japanese computers in the People’s Republic of China, has seduced the secretary of Fang Gan, a member of the Chinese Communist politburo or governing council, dominated by Zhang Han San, thus giving the CIA access to the inner workings and conversations of China’s despotic governing elite.

Communist China has been rapidly building up its military, purchasing weapons and other war materials from abroad, but the Chinese economy, in spite of its many exports, verges on bankruptcy, although the members of the politburo are only dimly aware of the impending crisis. Fortuitously, a lifeline appears. Massive amounts of gold and enormous oil reserves are discovered in Russia’s Siberia, the oil reserves alone potentially larger than in the oil-rich Middle East. The gold and oil promise to invigorate and modernize Russian society, struggling since the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade earlier. To the Chinese leadership, the solution to China’s problems is to invade Russia and forcibly seize those valuable resources. Prior to the Chinese military invasion, an attempt is made to assassinate Sergy Golovko, the chief adviser to the Russian president and one-time nemesis of Ryan (but now a friend), as well as the Russian president himself. Both plots fail, however.

From the White House, President Ryan observes the machinations of the Chinese, helped in large part by the CIA’s access to politburo conversations. Militarily, Russia is unprepared for a major invasion of its territory. Old foes of Ryan from the Soviet era are now allies, and Ryan makes the obvious decision to assist Russia against Communist China aggression. As in Executive Orders, the war takes up several hundred pages of The Bear and the Dragon, from the Chinese mobilization to the Russian defensive preparations to the arrival of American forces to the ultimate defeat of the Chinese. The dramatic denouement of the novel results from a decision to eliminate China’s nuclear missiles in fear that they would be used in order to prevent final defeat. However, one missile, aimed at Washington, D.C., was not destroyed. Following prearranged plans for such a disaster, President Ryan is ordered to leave the district, but instead joins the crew on a docked Aegis antimissile ship, which, at the last possible minute, destroys the incoming nuclear weapon, thus saving America’s capital. In China, university students, reacting angrily to the corrupt and despotic nature of the Communist leadership, gather in Tiananmen Square, march to the party headquarters, and confront the politburo. Zhang and the rest of the hard-liners are arrested and Fang assumes leadership, with the implication that a more democratic China will emerge.