[In the following review, Wise offers a tempered assessment of Clear and Present Danger, which he describes as "a ponderous thriller."]

"It was odd, Cutter thought, how ideas grow. First the President had made an intemperate remark after learning that the cousin of a close friend had died of a drug overdose."

Next thing you know, Vice Adm. James Cutter, the President's national security adviser (and a certified baddie in Tom Clancy's new techno-thriller, Clear and Present Danger), has a chat with the C.I.A.'s senior spook. Before you can say Jack Armstrong, a team of Army commandos is assassinating workers at coca-processing sites in the jungles of Colombia and Navy smart bombs are blowing up the haciendas of the Medellin cocaine cartel, killing women and children as well as the evil drug lords. The body count is high.

Clearly, the new President has gone far beyond Nancy Reagan's "Just say no." A covert war has been launched against the drug cartel, and all the sophisticated weaponry, laser beams and enormous firepower so dear to Mr. Clancy's heart are unleashed.

At first, the reader might erroneously conclude that the author approves of these murderous and illegal activities—illegal because nobody bothered to tell Congress, and the President's complicity remains fuzzy. Echoes of Iran-contra are clear and present.

Aboard a Coast Guard cutter, where men are men, the legendary captain Red Wegener stages a mock execution to wring a confession from a suspected murderer and enforcer for the druggies. The suspect's arm is broken for good measure. Army commandos threaten to feed a drug-running pilot to a monster alligator, a method of eliciting information not contemplated by the Supreme Court in its Miranda decision. We are left with a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Clancy is not a staunch supporter of due process.

Wrong. Enter Jack Ryan, the C.I.A. good guy, who gradually uncovers the covert plot. Ryan not only saves the American troops—or what is left of them—in the jungles of Colombia, he saves Clear and Present Danger from being just another beach thriller to enjoy among the sand fleas.

The issues raised are real ones, and a jump ahead of the headlines. Does the drug traffic threaten America's national security? And if so, is the Government justified in murdering the suppliers? Jack Ryan is troubled by these questions (although not too much), and so he and the rest of us should be. It is not beyond belief, after all, that a President would encourage the C.I.A. to send covert teams against the Medellin chiefs. Ryan concludes that this might be all right if Congress declared war on the drug cartels.

For Clancy fans, it probably won't make the least bit of difference that his dialogue has not improved one whit since The Hunt for Red October. One sample will suffice. A Cuban intelligence agent working for the drug lords beds down the vulnerable, widowed secretary to the Director of the F.B.I. Their pillow talk includes this exchange:

"'It isn't just police work. They also do counterespionage. Chasing spies,' she added.

"'That is CIA, no?'

"'No. I can't talk about it, of course, but, no, that is a Bureau function.'"

And Mr. Clancy's readers won't be disappointed in the exhaustive list of gadgetry. He grooves on the Ground Laser Designator and the Varo Noctron-V night-sighting device, which help the C.I.A. drop the GBU-15 laser-guided bomb from a carrier-launched A-6E Intruder medium attack bomber. And so on, and on. Mr. Clancy lovingly describes the hardware of death; he is an indecent docent in a gallery of horrors. Heads roll (literally), body parts fly, blood flows.

It all takes a long, long time. The plot moves slowly, like a great, clanking clock, on the order of Big Ben. We see the gears turn and hear the machinery creaking and wonder if the big hand will ever get round. The patient reader is rewarded, however, the last hundred pages move with the speed of light.

But the excitement comes too late. Mr. Clancy has produced a contradiction in terms: a ponderous thriller. It won't bother his devotees, or the sand fleas.