Tom Clancy

Military Gung-ho man who sells a ton of books on military-based fiction. He once quipped that "if we sent in the Marines, our best fighting force in the world, we could wipe out the whole drug trade in cartels. They would be no match for the finest fighting force in the world." That, personally, totally turned me off him but I have to say that in "the Hunt for Red October", it was absolutely frightening to me how much of my anti-submarine work, when I worked for the US DOD, (like Lamps Mark III) that he had right on the mark, down to every detail. That book, by the way, is a classic. -- sg

Agree that TheHuntForRedOctober? is a classic; it's the only novel I've ever read cover-to-cover in one sitting. I got turned off when reading The Bear and the Dragon, due to the endless speeches by President Ryan about abortion, economic policies, and other political issues. I don't care what Mr Clancy thinks about any of those things - I just want him to concentrate on the military stuff, which he does well. -- KrisJohnson

I enjoyed TheHuntForRedOctober?, but PatriotGames? was quite bad. The Sum of All Fears is about the Holy Land, a missing nuke, and a terror attack at the Super Bowl. A pretty good book. The movie comes out in the summer of 2002 (Ben Affleck replaces Harrison Ford (who replaced Alec Baldwin) and Morgan Freeman replaces JamesEarlJones?). -- SeanOleary

I enjoy his NetForce? books the most... but then that's probably because I'm a bit of a NetAddict? :) -- GavinLambert

Reportedly outraged by film adaptation of ClearAndPresentDanger?. The story deals with covert operations in SouthAmerica? to wipe out drug plantations and the like--operations conducted (in an obvious parallel with the IranContraScandal?) without congressional notice or oversignt. (Like IranContraScandal?, the president is a "conservative", and Congress is dominated by "liberals"). In the book, the President is portrayed as a heroic patriot, risking his career to DoTheRightThing despite treacherous interference by the PantyWaistLiberal?s in Congress. The film, OTOH, does a 180--the President and his men are portrayed as dangerous, Nixonite subverters of law and democracy, and the congresspersons trying to stop them are portrayed as heroes wearing the white hats. Perhaps even holywood audiences wouldn't buy as laughable spin as the first version?

Reportedly also uses ghostwriters extensively nowadays.

Note that the Netforce and Op Center junk is "co-written" with some filler material authors. It isn't really Clancy -- it just has his name on it.

TC might possibly be right-of-center, but always focus on his actual message, behind the flag waving. The book www.bookshelved.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WithoutRemorse? , for example, featured a former OperationPhoenix? operator reminiscing about murdering innocent Vietnamese civilians, in between murdering drug dealers supplying our national appetite. They dealt heroin flown in from Afghanistan - oops I mean Vietnam - in military body bags. Then our operator uses some of the heroin to murder the deludedly liberal aide of a Washington official, at the behest of the CIA, to plug a leak. And he's supposed to be the "good guy".

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