Likely not the last installment in the Ryan saga—not with a world full of terrorists, disgruntled KGB types and Venezuelans.
The late Clancy (1947-2013) ends his active role in his Jack Ryan franchise on an oddly timely note.
Ryan, former CIA op, is president, of course, and he’s back up against the Russkies. You can tell who they are since, even when transliterated into English, they say da: “Da. I have been tasked with protecting this building, not the Communist Party.” And why, Fearless Leader? Because they’re commies, and they do what they’re supposed to do. The biggest, baddest commie of all is Vladimir Putin—beg pardon, Valeri Volodin, veteran of the former Soviet Empire and now, two decades after the fall, the engineer of its resurgence. First off comes the invasion of Estonia “on the first moonless night of spring,” an act that NATO fails to oppose even though Estonia is a NATO signatory; then comes turmoil in Ukraine. Here’s where it gets especially timely, for, as Clancy and Greaney write, just off the headlines, “Any hopes the police might have had that the situation would defuse itself went away when tents started to be erected on both sides, and nationalists and Russian Ukrainians began clashes that turned more and more violent.” Jack Ryan Sr. and Jr. team up again to take Volodin on, even though, in a nod to verisimilitude on the people instead of the hardware front, the authors admit that Jr. makes a poor spy inasmuch as he looks just like his world-famous pop. Must the nukes shower down upon him in order to make Volodin behave? The Ryans, naturally enough, have another card to play. It’s vintage Clancy (Threat Vector, 2012, etc.) stuff, full of cool technology and cardboard characters (“he was a single-minded and purposeful individual, perhaps to a pathological degree”), with a story that, given enough suspended disbelief, is a pleasing fairy tale for people who like things that blow up.
Likely not the last installment in the Ryan saga—not with a world full of terrorists, disgruntled KGB types and Venezuelans.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-16047-9
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
Fans—and Grisham has endless numbers of them—will be pleased.
The prolific Grisham (The Reckoning, 2018, etc.) turns in another skillfully told procedural.
Pay attention to the clerical collar that Cullen Post occasionally dons in Grisham’s latest legal thriller. Post comes by the garb honestly, being both priest and investigative lawyer, his Guardian Ministries devoted to freeing inmates who have been wrongly imprisoned. Says an adversary at the start of the book, learning that his conviction is about to be overturned, “Is this a joke, Post?” Post replies: “Oh sure. Nothing but laughs over here on death row.” Aided by an Atlantan whom he sprang from the slam earlier, Post turns his energies to trying to do the same for Quincy Miller, a black man imprisoned for the murder of a white Florida lawyer who “had been shot twice in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun, and there wasn’t much left of his face.” It’s to such icky details that Post’s meticulous mind turns: Why a shotgun and not a pistol, as most break-ins involve? Who would have done such a thing—surely not the guy's wife, and surely not for a measly $2 million in life insurance? As Grisham strews the path with red herrings, Post, though warned off by a smart forensic scientist, begins to sniff out clues that point to a culprit closer to the courtroom bench than the sandy back roads of rural Florida. Grisham populates his yarn with occasionally goofy details—a prosecuting attorney wants Post disbarred “for borrowing a pubic hair” from the evidence in a case—but his message is constant throughout: The “innocent people rotting away in prison” whom Post champions are there because they are black and brown, put there by mostly white jurors, and the real perp “knew that a black guy in a white town would be much easier to convict.” The tale is long and sometimes plods, especially in its courtroom scenes, but it has a satisfying payoff—and look out for that collar at the end.
Fans—and Grisham has endless numbers of them—will be pleased.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54418-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
A page-turner with the kind of small details that lend unquestionable authenticity.
A spy dealing with personal trauma is called back into action to stop the use of a dangerous chemical weapon.
A former Army helicopter pilot and FBI special agent, Bentley delivers his debut novel with the introduction of Defense Intelligence Agent Matt Drake. After an op in Syria went sideways and his best friend was maimed, Drake walked away carrying heavy emotional baggage. Haunted by those he couldn’t save and in self-imposed exile from his wife in order to protect her, Matt wants nothing to do with his old life at the Defense Intelligence Agency. But when he's brought back under duress to help stop terrorists from using an untraceable chemical weapon against Americans, Drake feels a lurking sense of obligation, and before he knows it he's back on duty. The seeming purity of Drake’s call to serve is contrasted with the petty political infighting within the highest reaches of government. A chief of staff for the president is angling to jam a CIA director who has political ambitions of her own, and Drake’s mission falls right in the middle of this elaborate political scheme. While the flow of the story seems most natural during the shoot'em-up action scenes, this is a novel with an emotional core, and that may be what makes it stand out from other thrillers of a similar ilk.
A page-turner with the kind of small details that lend unquestionable authenticity.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0511-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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