Just seen on the news that Tom Clancy has died
Read most of his books on a train or a plane at some time not highbrow but not a bad read
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I enjoyed the earlier stuff, but I stopped at the one after Clear & Present Danger. They got too much like hard work for me.
Shame though.
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I read some of his books - including some naval one that seemed to think it was a computer game. I loved the films based on his books. To me Harrison Ford was the definitive Jack Ryan - he was very knowledgable on Naval matters and acknowledged the RN's expertise in a lot of areas. He recounts one anecdote about joint USN and RN exercises in the Gulf where an RN ship was to run the gauntlet of all of the USN's Carrier fleet capability - it did it by sailing past them with all external lights blazing and the US fleet never expected this and ignored them....
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>> I enjoyed the earlier stuff, but I stopped at the one after Clear & Present
>> Danger. They got too much like hard work for me.
Yeah and here. Red October and Red Storm Rising were superb books, I read RSR on one sitting on a flight from London to Sydney. Red Storm rising had more to do with the input of Larry Bond, than TC (Larry Bond then wrote the excellent Red Phoenix - RSR in Korea in effect)
They quickly became "samey", over inflated and his rabid "gung ho shoot them filthy reds", "hooray for the NRA" and "damn weak democrat presidents" became too much and I gave up on them, despite trying for a few. Op centre and Net Force were pure crap
He did actually write some faction and non fiction that were quite good, especially "SSN: Strategies for Submarine Warfare" and "Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship"
but on the whole his prodigious output well outstripped his talent.
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 2 Oct 13 at 19:26
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>> They quickly became "samey", over inflated and his rabid "gung ho shoot them filthy reds",
>> "hooray for the NRA" and "damn weak democrat presidents" became too much and I gave
>> up on them, despite trying for a few. Op centre and Net Force were pure
>> crap
ditto.
The past couple of Ryan novels, where he writes with a co-author, were not very good at all.
There's a couple of authors like that - Cussler, Griffin, spring to mind - where they seem to be lending their name to the enterprise, but not doing all the work.
Also, a well-known British author's latest novel seems to be either a make-a-quick-buck novel, or wasn't all his own work, if you know what I mean...
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I read a lot of Tom Clancy's books but not in a long while. Like other authors producing a book a year their quality went downhill. I just took a look to see what books I might have missed in all this time.... Did he really write Jack Ryan Jr books....!! Well clearly he did write a series.
Some good books previously read but I suspect he sold out. And he was already earning a fortune.
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As others have said, the later books were not as good, and a bit samey, but I have read them all. I get the impression his research was a bit thinner in later years too - not so much on the military side, but some of his observations on civilian life were well off target.
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Tom Clancy - No FM2R
