Share for friends:

Read Clear And Present Danger (1994)

Clear and Present Danger (1994)

Online Book

Author
Genre
Series
Rating
4.05 of 5 Votes: 5
Your rating
ISBN
0425144372 (ISBN13: 9780425144374)
Language
English
Publisher
berkley

Clear And Present Danger (1994) - Plot & Excerpts

Tom Clancy is a highly respected author. Just putting his name on a book sells about a million copies. For the life of me I can’t see why. In fact, I’m beginning to question all the super popular books. Dan Brown turned out to be basically terrible. Clive Cussler leans so heavily on the worst sexist tropes that its a wonder his books don’t collapse under the weight of how terrible they are.To say this book is overhyped is probably the most severe understatement of the century. This is probably the worst case of self-congratulatory, poorly written, purple prose I have ever encountered. To top it all off, it’s also really boring.The story goes something like this:Character, back story, back story, flashback, boring back story, breakfast.New Character, boring back story, flashback, boring back story, dramatic statement.Mix. Repeat. When you get to character number twenty or so. Then start over at the beginning.Now the fun part. Give all the characters kind of similar sounding names so when the reader finally gets back to character number one they don’t really know who that is. Is this a new guy? Is this somebody I’ve read about before? Oh, he must be new because we just launched into a backstory. Wait. This is the same background as the first guy. Why are we doing this again?To mix it up we’ll have character (a) be a widow, her husband died. Of cancer. Her boss, character (b), is a congressman whose wife died. Of cancer. Character (c) is some kind of super genius married to a rich surgeon. His best friend is dying. Of cancer.Did Tom Clancy have a message buried somewhere in the all the nauseum or did he just not realize that here are other ways for people to die?Or maybe this book is about cancer and how evil it is and how it changes people and makes them different. Cancer is a Clear and Present Danger and we’re gong to fight it. With helicopters and guns.Only its actually drugs. The war on drugs is getting real. We’re going to invade foreign countries, perform espionage and train an elite group of soldiers to stop drug trafficking. It’s the ‘90s and we don’t have Russia to be scared of any more so we have to have something to shoot at. Lets go kill some South Americans because they are responsible for drugs. Which probably caused all the cancer.I think I could have handled all of those things if the book hadn’t been so boring. I’ve read books that are riddled with cliches. I’ve enjoyed movies that are nothing but stupid piled on stupid (one of my favorite movies is Sahara — which just doesn’t get any stupider — though part of the reason I like it is because I don’t think the movie is taking itself seriously) but this is aggressively boring.It takes nearly one third of this dangerously long novel to even see the name of the main character, who turns out to be capable at everything he does and his best friend is dying of cancer.Clancy had a middle schoolers view of politics and how they work. He also has almost no understanding of law, international relations or even critical thinking skills. There are senators and vice presidents and attaches and spies and drug dealers and consuls and not one of them seems able to scrape a couple brain cells together long enough to make an intelligent decision.But they have backgrounds. And loved ones who have died. Of cancer.I will give him two things. When the action starts the reader is there. You are in the cockpit, you are firing the gun, crouching in the jungle. You are in the fight. It only lasts for about a paragraph but that paragraph is pure gold.Hopefully you’ll live long enough to find the next action scene.The other thing is closely related. Clancy gets military culture and equipment. His use of those things is obviously meticulously researched and deployed to deadly effect. He understands how intelligence gathering works, and how training works. He knows all the different weapons, how they work, what they do, their weaknesses, their strengths. He knows how it feels to pull a six gee turn in the cockpit of a fighter. He knows how it sounds to fire a sniper rifle with a silencer firmly attached to the barrel.I have no idea if he really knows those things but I know he convinced me. For what that’s worth.If you distill this book down to its discussions of military equipment and materiel and the action scenes. It would probably be only about ten pages but it would sure be a lot more fun to read.Maybe I expected too much.

This book is part of the Jack Ryan series but it can be read as a stand alone. A rape and murder is committed on a boat that is in the open seas. It is discovered and puts into motion a series of events that will find the United States initiating a strike against the drug cartel who is the opposition in the war on drugs.I loved the concept of this novel and I believe that everyone would too. Who cannot get behind the idea of a nation trying to protect its citizens and strike a blow against the drug overlords? This book was so detail oriented that I thought I was reading a non-fiction novel instead of a fiction one. I enjoyed the characters esp. Clark who was introduced in a previous novel. In this one, the author explores this character and he has become a favorite. There is plenty of action as we get gun battles and soldiers doing what they do best. This novel also explores how this storyline affects different areas of our government and their role in an action like this.There were two reasons why I did not give this five stars. The first was how this was a Jack Ryan novel. He did not appear in the first 170 pages and then it was just in passing. Jack's role in this book wasn't prevalent until the final third of this book. The second is the details and the military jargon which is a strong point but also a weakness. At times, it was a little too much and I found myself reading pages that went over my head. I am not the person who knows the differences between guns or military ways. I know one expects this in a Tom Clancy novel but I believe he could trim this aspect down and also the size of the novel and it would not affect the enjoyment of it.That being said, this is a great read and one where the reader will be rooting for the good guys to be victorious.

What do You think about Clear And Present Danger (1994)?

There was a clear and present danger that I wasn't going to finish this.I don't watch soap operas. I used to. I'd get home and General Hospital would be on (Mom was heavily invested in the Luke & Laura saga,) so I got stuck with it. Consequently I know a soap opera when I see one and Clear and Present Danger is a soap opera. How so? It jumps from character to character, from scene to scene. Some of it's nearly as melodramatic as a soap, but I won't go that far in my analogy. Mainly the issue is in the episodic nature of the storytelling. The scenes are big-time ADHD in how they flitter back and forth. This has an adverse affect on character development. In fact, it seems as if Clancy attempts to counter this with info dumps. Often he introduces a brand new character, who may not even be particularly important, with a mountainous info-dump… This is Joe Schmoe. Joe was born in Eastbumfuq, IL, went to school at… and a minute later Mr. Schmoe is dead. I know it's a writer's attempt to instill an instant reader-connection to the character so that his death means something, but it doesn't work for me. I don't give a shit if a thousand such Joe Schmoes die at the hands of the baddest of bad guys. Nice try, but perhaps the issue is that you're trying to pack too much stuff into an already chunky book. Emotional bonds take time to develop. Okay, I've been too nasty those far. Let's look at Clancy's good points...Action is his strong suit. He puts you right in it. Whether it's firing a gun from a helicopter or stalking an enemy in the jungle, you're in the shit with the characters. However, if you were to debate that his strongest point is his research and application of military technical details within his books, I would concede. Guns, ships, helicopters, military rank and decorum, wartime politics, spy craft, covert missions, etc etc etc phew-eee! This book grunts and oozes the stuff! I can see how military buffs, special ops fanatics, and "gun nuts" would go gah-gah over a book like this. We've all got our little fetishes and Clancy provides the porn for violent techies. (Before you start calling me a liberal, hippy, pussy, tree hugger or any of that shit, just shut the fuck up. I've owned guns since I was a kid.) I just don't get a woody over firearms anymore. I shot that load when I was pre-teen and moved on. But I guess if reading a Clancy novel satisfies the sort of person that gets off on that shit and it helps them get it out of their system, well then I'm glad these books exist. Okay, back to the nasty…Where the F is Jack Ryan? He's barely mentioned in the first half of the book and then when he does show up it's only to look around and ask, "what's going on?" And that is really his only purpose in the book, and it's purposeless. Sure, the main character fumbling about trying to figure out what's going on works great for murder mysteries, but that's because we the reader also don't know what's going on. We're finding out the truth with them. But here we already know what's going on because that's what's being related in the main story. That's the more interesting part! Every time Clancy cuts to Jack the book bogs right down into a full-on snorefest. Like I said at the top, I almost didn't finish this. After about the midway point the whole freakin' thing turned into one of those snorefests for me. The writing was only adequate, the storytelling too jumpy, the spot-lighted details not my cup of tea. Perhaps if I spiked my tea with testosterone? Nah. I'd only end up inadvertently ripping the book in half out of sheer excitement. Rating: 2.5 stars. I generously gave it three stars only because I'm in a good mood and GR's rating system is ridged. * * * * * * * * * (Note upon the author's death)Seems like it's becoming a thing where if an author's book sits on my nightstand waiting to be read for more than a couple weeks, the author is doomed to die. Yikes.
—Jason Koivu

The story starts in an election year, with the sitting president of the U.S. realizing he needs to do something about the drug problem. The books starts off slowly, as often Clancy books do, laying the groundwork for the rest of the book. I advise you to hang in there, it gets good and picks up the pace. Clancy is very detailed about weapons, tactics, planes, boats, choppers, and everything military, from the struggles of politics to the struggles of the chain of command. For some this is a drawback, for me it is a plus.Tom (Mr. Clark) Kelly from "Without Remorse" is back. At first he only has a few cameos, and at first was disappointed, but later he joins as one of the central characters.The book starts with a Coast Guard ship finding a ship at sea with a family of four brutally murdered, after the wife and daughter are raped. Then the thugs dismember them all and throw them overboard to the scavengers to eat. This so affects the crew and captain, they come up with a plan to get them the two surviving murderers to talk. It wasn't legal, but it was quite innovative, and it will get your approval. What happens from there is the discovery of a money-laundering scheme for the Colombian drug cartel, and the FBI is able to seize over $600 million in cartel assets.From there we got to a secret black op, ordered by the president, to hit the cartel where it lives. He cites the "Clear and Present Danger" clause for his action, and delays informing the congress and senate. Jack Ryan is now acting director of the CIA, as Admiral Greer lays wasting away in the hospital, in the last days of his life, losing the fight with cancer. Meanwhile, Admiral Cutter, Judge Moore, and Ritter, run the op without informing Jack. A new team of Spanish-American light infantry soldiers are chosen for this op. The goal is to attack them where they operate, and to start a war among the cartel members.This is a story of spying, political intrigue, the frustration of America and Colombian democracies both having their hands tied legally to get rid of the cartels, and some determined men out to bend the rules a bit to achieve what can't be done legally. It is also a story of betrayal, one high American official sacrificing others for his own career.
—Morris Graham

Non tutti lo ameranno; io però me lo sono letto in un sol fiato. Alcune parti sono un po' meno godibili di altre, ma la tensione non cala mai, anzi! Se amate questo genere di letture "Pericolo imminente" vi piacerà senza dubbio: i combattimenti sono (come sempre) ricchi di azione, dettagli e realismo. Se cercate una lettura semplice e rilassata, questo libro non fa per voi. Come al solito Tom Clancy fa uso di termini tecnici e descrizioni accurate per tutto quello che riguarda il mondo militare, rendendo la lettura più complessa, ma, secondo me, più interessante.
—Giorgio Bonvicini

Write Review

(Review will shown on site after approval)

Read books by author Tom Clancy

Read books in series Jack Ryan

Read books in category Fiction