[In the following review, Abrams offers a favorable assessment of Clear and Present Danger.]

Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger begins with a president sitting in his high-backed, bullet-resistant chair in the Oval Office, grumbling to his national security adviser. "I promised the American people that we'd do something about this problem and we haven't accomplished …," he says, crossly buttering a croissant.

Mr. Clancy's new thriller revolves around the question: What do we do about drugs, when all the speeches are over? For Mr. Clancy's president, code name Wrangler, the answer is calling up the military in a covert operation after drug lords murder a high-ranking U.S. official. Soon, there's an undeclared war under way in Colombia, while the talk continues in Washington. Mr. Clancy revels in the proficiency, bravery and successes of the servicemen, but enough goes wrong with Operation Showboat to leave the reader wondering whether military action would ever work in the real world.

Which is about where the debate stands now in Washington: Civilians muse about hitting the traffickers hard, while the top brass at the Pentagon resists involvement as bitterly as it does a budget cut. The generals seem to fear taking on an ill-defined, and perhaps hopeless, task. They worry about the increased temptation for corruption. They view anti-drug activity as police work, if not indeed social work. And they point to the federal forces already mobilized and stepping on each other's toes: The Justice Department, the CIA, the U.S. Customs Service, the Coast Guard and the newly formed drug czardom.

One can certainly agree that as long as Americans demand more and more cocaine, and pay endless billions for it, no action on the supply side can possibly succeed. Demand reduction is the only long-term solution. Yet the generals, and others who counsel action only on the demand side, are wrong. In the short run, tough action to interdict supply routes, blow up laboratories and capture and extradite traffickers is critical. It will reduce the supply of drugs and, perhaps even more important, give the countries fighting on the front lines—Colombia, Peru and particularly Bolivia—the moral support and the resources they need to resist the immense power of the drug lords.

Since it is our citizens who, after all, create the cocaine market, do we have the right to urge those fragile Latin democracies to wage war on drugs if we plan to take a pacifist stance? Military action is no panacea, but it is an essential tool in this war as in any other.

Mr. Clancy grasps well the need to help, not blame, democracies fighting hard against drugs. Says his FBI director, later murdered by the drug mafia: "Colombia is trying damn hard to run a real democracy in a region where democracies are pretty rare … and you expect them to do—what? Trash what institutions they do have?… go fascist again to hunt down the druggies just because it suits us?" What helps to make Clear and Present Danger such compelling reading is a fairly sophisticated view of Latin politics combined with Mr. Clancy's patented, tautly shaped scenes, fleshed out with colorful technical data and tough talk.

Mr. Clancy's convincing portrait of Cuba under Castro comes through the comments of the novel's foulest character—a former Cuban intelligence officer who now works for the drug chieftains. Credit the author with a good nose for news about to happen. We read the ex-officer's musings and memories of the Cuba he left behind just as the headlines have reported Stalin-style show trials in Havana. Never mind Castro's most pious disclaimers, and the hanging of his close associates: Cuba is heavily involved with drug trafficking, and the new wave of repression is entirely consistent with the brutal, cynical communist system Mr. Clancy's villain recalls with great fondness.

The Cuban reflects happily that today "the yanquis had not yet discovered within themselves the courage to act in accordance with their power." It is clear that Mr. Clancy thinks this leaves the world a far less safe place.

Clear and Present Danger is another in Mr. Clancy's Jack Ryan series, focusing on the escapades of Ryan, his friends and family, and the assorted villains he meets. In The Hunt For Red October, Red Storm Rising and The Cardinal of the Kremlin, the bad guys were some type of communist: in Patriot Games they were terrorists. A few other familiar characters are also reintroduced, although Mr. Clancy minimizes character development and concentrates on his story—to put it politely.

Faithful fans of Mr. Clancy will not be disappointed with Ryan's new incarnation as "DDI," official lingo for deputy director of the CIA for intelligence analysis. Like Mr. Clancy, Ryan shows no signs of slowing down, much less losing his grip. It takes about five chapters to get all the characters straight, after which you won't stop until you hit the last pages, when Ryan and the president confront each other over the usefulness and legality of covert operations. With its allusions to events past and present, Clear and Present Danger makes absorbing reading.