I need some new reading material for my Kindle, and I am in the mood for something Clancy-ish.
I loved Tom Clancy’s work up to Executive Orders. Everything after that sucked.
Most everything Clancy wrote were well-written stories, technically plausible (not necessarily accurate) with plots that made sense.
Any recommendations for some different authors?
I liked Larry Bond’s books. He co-authored Red Storm Rising with Tom Clancy.
Larry Bond. Try his earlier stuff like Red Phoenix and Cauldron if you liked Red Storm Rising.
Good suggestions! Cheap at $3.99 each, too.
Stephen Coontz has some great books in a similar vein. I enjoy them more than Clancy.
Prolific writer. Could you recommend one or two that were really outstanding?
I haven’t read this stuff in a while, but back in the day I liked:
By Harold Coyle:
Team Yankee - WW3 told from the point of view of a tank company fighting in Germany. Think Red Storm Rising told from a tank captain’s POV.
Sword Point - Russians and US fighting a war in Iran. remember reading it, but don’t remember if it was good or not. It’s the first in a series of novels following these characters to other (increasingly improbable) military encounters.
By Larry Bond:
Red Phoenix - a 2nd Korean War.
By Ralph Peters:
Red Army - basically Red Storm Rising told from the Russian point of view.
I haven’t read or revisited any of these books for 20+ years so I won’t vouch for their quality. But I enjoyed them all at the time I was reading those same Clancy novels. Checking on Amazon it appears that at least some of these authors are still writing.
Mark Berent, if you can find him. Vietnam vet who turned his experiences into a series of novels, supposedly as a way to deal with PTSD.
…I dunno, smashing your forehead repeatedly against a flagpole?
Not a Clancy fan?
I always liked Ludlum, but its not as technical.
Well, I’m a bigger fan of ironic humour, truth be told. Clancy’s an easy target (indeed, it’s almost a sign of laziness on my part to take a shot at him) and I got slightly soured by a book with Clancy’s name on it, though he didn’t actually write it: OP Center 6: State of Siege, in which officials of the U.N. are not only completely useless during a hostage situation at the U.N. headquarters in New York, but actively trying to make the situation worse.
That said, I once picked up #5 in the Black Berets series by Mike McCray. I recommend it primarily because after forcing oneself through it, Clancy will seem a welcome relief. But more seriously, Ken Follett’s Triple was pretty good.
See, that why I drew the line at Executive Orders, although Rainbow Six had moments. Everything after that, and especially the ones that were co-written (ghost-written via franchise?) by other authors, were crap.
Coyle was my first thought. The difference is Clancy starts with the big picture but gets down in the weeds on some events. Clancy’s strength is that big picture that he fleshes out at the tactical level. Coyle was an Armor officer. His strength is down in the weeds at the tactical level which he then fleshes out with enough operational and strategic level to sustain the story. Like you point out some of that big picture can be less plausible than Clancy. They just have different focuses for their story telling.
I liked Coyle better than Clancy because of that difference. I was also an Armor Officer so apply as many grains of salt as needed. 
I’d start with the first book in the Scott Dixon series as a trial. “Sword Point” is the story of the Soviet-US war in Iran. It’s not as deep into the weeds as Team Yankee’s story of a single tank heavy company-team. I haven’t read any of his later works after that series though.
It’s not a techno-thriller on the Clancy vein, but the best pure thriller I’ve ever read is Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter. Starts with a reclusive former marine sniper being asked to consult on how best to protect the president of the US from a sniper assassin, then he realizes things aren’t what the seem, and everything goes haywire. If I didn’t read the entire thing in a single sitting, it’s only because they wouldn’t let me.
John Gilstrap. Well, maybe. I think of them as kind of the same action-driven stories.
“Storming Intrepid” by Payne Harrison
Read another of his books and couldn’t even finish it but this one is, although admittedly dated, a real page-turner which I’ve often described as the book Clancy wishes he’d wrote.
Oh, yeah. One of my favorites.
W.E.B. Griffin?
Under Siege - which has nothing to do with the Seagal movie is particularly good.