First thought: RIP. I spent many enjoyable hours in high school and college with the Jack Ryan series. (And Red Storm Rising.)
Second thought: I wonder if this is a good time to try to sell my signed copy of Patriot Games on eBay.
Breaking News on NBCNews.com right now.
So young… was he sick?
just heard. i spent many a hour reading his books. some could also count as exercise equipment, as they weighed close to 5 pounds.
Put it up quick for like 10 grand and see if you have any takers.
I loved his early books. I did like how he could weave multiple story lines that seemed totally unrelated and was able to bring them all together at the end. Especially in Sum of All Fears. They seem like relics of the Cold War now. His books did get worse as he went on. I couldn’t read anything after *Teeth of the Tiger. *
I have a signed copy of Rainbow Six somewhere. Probably not worth too much. The last book I read was Red Rabbit I think. Honestly I thought everything starting with * Executive Orders* was awful.
I loved his early books when I was in college. Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Red Storm Rising, and many others. When I read them I remember thinking that his stories were very tightly woven, events that seemed to be completely random ended up working their way into the narrative at some point. Jack Ryan was a great action hero - an every man who found himself propelled into world events but without public acclaim. But over time it seemed that Clancy put less and less care into his stories and they started to feel mass produced to me so I stopped reading them. Even so, those early books were very enjoyable and I remember them vividly - something I can’t say for many other books I read back then.
So far, no one’s said what the cause was. But I suspect enemy fire.
RIP
Can you imagine how long his obituary will be. 78 pages about a housekeeper he employed one summer.
I lasted one book longer. I loved his early books, including Executive Orders when it came out, and thanks to the movies, I had a mental picture of Harrison Ford as Ryan. But now that W has shown us what actually having a President like that would be like, I’m ashamed of myself.
But even before Bush was elected, I didn’t like Rainbow Six at all (in fact, that was the book that ended a lifetime habit buying new books from favorite authors sight unseen), I thought The Bear and The Dragon was awful in plot, writing, and editing, and the reviews on Amazon were so bad for subsequent books that I never bothered. Evidently he started farming them out to ghost writers, with very poor editing.
I’ve been a loyal Clancy fan for a long time and I’ve read all of his latest ones. I thought the co-authors helped immensely as they put some meat on his bare-bones characters. “Dead or Alive” was a bit of a stinker but the next few after were pretty good. I really liked “Threat Vector” despite the omnipotent villain (which becomes more plausible with each NSA leak).
He’s got a new Jack Ryan novel coming out in December, titled “Command Authority.” I hope it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger.
Too bad. I was a big fan once, though Clancy in person always struck me as, well, kind of a jerk.
His best books were a lot of fun- but he really needed a good editor, one with the power and confidence to tell him, “You already spelled this point out twice, no need to say it again” or “You’re kinda rambling on here- get to the point.”
I’ll add my voice to the chorus that I really enjoyed the first half-dozen books or so.
Also, I needed a spot to comment upon the apparent irony of AOL inviting me to follow this ‘developing’ story…
I remember actually finding a passage in Sum of All Fears that was so rambling it made no sense whatsoever. The movie made from the book was completely awful, but I guess Clancy had very little control over any of the films.
Without Remorse is my favorite Clancy novel, despite its numerous flaws.
I just finished Rainbow Six Monday night. This is a real bummer to hear he died.
His later stuff with co-authors was acceptable, and I liked The Hunt for Red October less than some of his other stuff, but I enjoyed most of everything else he wrote. Once you get used to the lovingly detailed descriptions and acronyms of all things military, it flows more smoothly.
The quintessential Clancy passage is the chapter in Sum of All Fears where he describes the microsecond it takes for an atom bomb to go off. For a whole chapter.
I doubt that Jack Ryan would have been any good at all as President, but it was a fun fantasy to see him try anyway.
RIP.
Regards,
Shodan
It was probably the Russians.
I liked his early stuff quite a bit. Sad to see he has passed away.
More likely the Americans. The detail in his books were a little scary.
I was a big fan of Clancy’s early works. “Cardinal of the Kremlin” in particular was fantastic.
But Without Remorse was just straight-up torture porn. Nobody deserves what Clark did to the “baddies” in that book. Hell, even bin Laden got a relatively easy bullet in the head.
Everything after *The Sum of all Fears *was just mindless pandering to what Clancy mistakenly felt was his audience. *Rainbow Six *was where he really jumped the shark. IIRC, there was one scene in that book where a sniper on the “good” side shot a terrorist in the guts so he’d die slowly and in great pain. Clancy expected his readers to think that was a good thing, even if the sniper was chastised for it.
And then the ultimate villains were some bizarre strawman version of environmentalists.
RIP to the guy, but he’s the quintessential example of an author who fell way too much in love with his characters, and who once he’d gained a loyal audience felt entitled to push his far-right extremist political views through his books.
I call Executive Orders “Tom Clancy’s If I Were President”.