by Tom Clancy ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1990
The Great Clancy Thriller Machine rumbles on, engines on full. This time out, the best-selling ace swivels his big guns away from his usual Russian targets (glasnost fallout?) and toward a nearly homegrown menace: the cocaine lords of Colombia and their deadly white powder. So complex, so intricately researched and detailed is Clancy's newest battle plan that his main hero—CIA-agent Jack Ryan, veteran of three past Clancy novels—doesn't appear until about 100 pages of this 500-page juggernaut have rolled by. That's no problem, though: the front of the novel, like the rest, is built of geared subplots, each of which has teeth enough to snag the reader. The stirring action begins in the White House, in a typical Clancy scene that not only sets up the premise—a radical American initiative against Colombian drug traffic—but also offers nifty inside-info: that the Oval Office's windows are made of light-distorting, bullet-resistant polycarbonate; that the President's chair is backed with bullet-proof DuPont Kevlar. Neither the detailing nor the action lets up as Clancy moves his focus to the high seas—where a Coast Guard skipper captures, tries, and mock-executes a pair of drug-smuggling pirates; to the Rockies—where an ace Ranger trains for a secret mission with other Hispanics under the gaze of dark-souled CIA-agent "Mr. Clark"; to Medellin—where a vile drug lord and his ex-KGB advisor counterplot against the Yanks; to Langley—where a newly promoted Ryan gets wind of the White House plan and its murderous excesses by the hand of a cruelly ambitious presidential advisor. Before the dust Clears, America will secretly invade Colombia; drug lords will assassinate the US attorney general; America will bomb Medellin; and many more will die as Ryan and Clark kill lots of drug lords and serfs to save American boys and honor. Dazzling macho-entertainment, and a rousing farewell present to his fans from the author—who now, as he has announced, caps (for how long?) his astonishingly popular pen.
Pub Date: July 1, 1990
ISBN: 0425122123
Page Count: 642
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1989
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by Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney
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by Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney
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by Tom Clancy
by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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