Over the past few years, when I haven't had the concentration necessary to read
non-fiction or literary novels, I've often found myself reading books in the Tom
Clancy franchise. Clancy died in 2013, but that hasn't stopped his estate from
engaging writers to contine writing about the characters that Clancy
established. Almost all of the books after Clancy died are about the son of
President Jack Ryan, namely Jack Ryan Junior; actually one or two of these books
were written while Clancy was still alive. The great advantage of having other
authors writing these books is that one doesn't get the 30% extra editorial
comment, and the weaponry pornography is also generally toned down.
By my count, there have been 22 books in the JRJ series: some of these have
been very good, some have been readable and some have been dire. A little
analysis reveals that all the good books were written by
Mark Greaney who bowed out of the franchise in 2017. Since then, the books have
varied in quality; for example, one book has JRJ on a working holiday in
Israel and within a few days he's in the command centre of the Mossad and sent
to Lebanon. So unbelievable and so bad. I've also read a few of
Greaney's solo books but didn't like them very much.
I read a few days ago a much more recent offering in the series, 'Red Winter'. The events of this book take place in 1985, when Jack Ryan Snr was a young analyst for the CIA, working in London. The Berlin Wall had yet to fall and
generally the world was in another place. The book starts off promisingly
(although in a slightly long-winded fashion) about the trial of a prototype
stealth bomber in Nevada that fails (incidentally, we are never told about why the trial
failed) and how an illegal East German spy manages to lay his hands on part of
the fuselage with the intention of smuggling this piece to the East so that
they can learn the secret of radar absorbing materials.
A second thread in the book is concerned with a 'walk-in': unsolicited
material from the East given to a lowly CIA clerk in West Berlin. So now the
CIA have a mole in East Germany whereas East Germany has a mole in the Berlin station of the CIA. As
a long time le Carré reader, I have to complain that although the starting
scenario is promising, it is handled badly. For some reason (well, for
non-universe marketing reasons, obviously), the young Jack Ryan is sent to
Berlin to handle the case, accompanied by Mary Pat Foley, heroine of a few
other Clancy books. Sent to help them in a background role is John Clark, who
has appeared in more of these books than Jack Ryan himself. Some of this part
of the story is handled well but most is mangled and unlikely, making for a poor reading
experience. There was so much potential but it was wasted.
So, unlike other series that have one author and generally have a reasonable
overall standard, these books are written by various authors who vary in their
quality. Thus one never knows when reading one of these books whether one will
enjoy the book or (figurately) throw it at the wall in frustration. Books
written by Grant Blackwood generally fall into this latter category (there is one book of his that I have never managed to finish, so bored was I), but fortunately
he is no longer employed by this franchise.
This day in history:
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 670 | Song festival - videos | Kibbutz | |
| 921 | Bitten by the bug | Programming, Priority tips | |
| 1373 | Winter sun (new song) - and musings on Carole King and obscure chords | Song writing, Home recording |
No comments:
Post a Comment