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

In his search for a fictional clear and present danger that the nation might attack with its latest military hardware, Tom Clancy, novelist laureate of the military-industrial complex, has discovered the drug cartel that operates out of Medellin, Colombia, and that is getting enormously rich from America's apparently insatiable demand for cocaine.

And a rousing adventure it is, too, what with a fake military hanging aboard a Coast Guard cutter, plus several squads of U.S. Army infantrymen, all superbly trained killers, who are covertly infiltrated into Colombia only to be abandoned by a feckless national security adviser to the president.

There is also the reappearance of Clancy's favorite hero, Jack Ryan, U.S. Marine, stockbroker, history professor, knight of the British realm and now next in line to be the CIA's deputy director.

Not yet 40, Ryan reflects on his career with understandable satisfaction: "He's made his money in the brokerage business—and the money was still growing; he needed his CIA salary about as much as he needed a third shoe—gotten his doctor's degree, written his books, taught some history, made himself a new and interesting career, and worked his way to the top."

But before Ryan makes his presence known rather late in the novel, Clancy introduces us to the president, who's pretty much of a bubblehead, the slippery director of central intelligence and the first Jewish director of the FBI, who is assassinated while on a supposedly secret mission to Colombia.

Thus, the cat is set amongst the pigeons, and from there on the action intensifies. An American fighter pilot is ordered to shoot down unarmed planes suspected of drug smuggling. The U.S. infantrymen, Latinos all, are ordered to eliminate a number of coca leaf processing plants along with any number of Colombia peasants who, to me, immediately brought to mind visions of Juan Valdez.

But the novel's two most interesting antagonists are the pseudonymous Mr. Clark of the CIA and the equally pseudonymous Senor Gomez, a KGB-trained agent, now in the pay of the drug lords. Clark is a professional CIA killer, who admits he hasn't been given much work lately. Gomez, on the other hand, has only contempt for his rich employers, and is convinced that he himself could be a far more cost-effective lord of all drug lords.

Clancy displays his usual fascination and familiarity with the latest war toys, which he describes with gee-whiz enjoyment: "They're testing a new system called LPI—Low Probability of Intercept—radar … because of a combination of frequency agility, reduced side-lobes and relatively low power output, it's damned hard to detect the emissions from the set."

But what I appreciate even more about Clancy is his ability to crawl inside the heads of his characters and reveal their innermost thoughts because, I suspect, he is right on the mark. The low-wattage president, for example, is much given to musing aloud, either to himself or to the mirror, and his thought fragments are chilling. "'It's time those bastards were taught a lesson,' the President thought aloud." Some 250 pages later: "'Okay,' the President of the United States told the mirror. 'So you bastards want to play.'"

In yet another moment of introspection, the president thinks about how the world really works: "Terrorists, criminals, all manner of cowards … regularly hide behind or among the innocent, daring the mighty to act … but sometimes they had to be shown that it didn't work. And that was messy, wasn't it? Like some sort of international auto accident … But how the hell do I explain that to the American people?"

The might of the United States—Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, CIA and FBI—is employed to make that international auto accident happen. And to avoid having those Americans who do the killing perceived as mercenaries off on a bloody spree, Clancy gives virtually all of them a friend, lover or relative who has been devastated by drugs. This is known as taking out insurance.

Still, Clancy brings it off because he is a writer with the ability to make a convoluted tale as clear as the directions on a match folder. This is no small art, and if his asides and philosophical ramblings make your teeth hurt, you can always chuckle, sigh or ignore them and get on with a cracking good yarn. I know I did.