This is kind of surprising. After a seven-year hiatus following The Teeth of the Tiger, Tom Clancy is delivering two mammoth new spy thrillers within six months of one another. 2010's Dead or Alive, which debuted in hardcover in time for Christmas, doesn't even come out in paperback until September... but that's not stopping Clancy from unleashing another new hardcover novel, Against All Enemies, this summer. Due out June 14, the 768-page novel is co-written with Peter Telep. Dead or Alive was also written with a collaborator (Grant Blackwood); perhaps that's the secret to Clancy suddenly becoming so prolific. In the past, he had collaborated on (or in many cases merely lent his name to) various series of paperback originals, including Op-Center, NetForce and Splinter Cell. (Former James Bond continuation author Raymond Benson penned the original novel in that series and a follow-up, Operation: Barracuda, under the pen name of David Michaels.) But Dead or Alive marked the first occasion on which the author collaborated on a book in his signature Jack Ryan series. It's unclear right now whether or not Against All Enemies is set in the Ryan Universe, though it is definitely a hardcover being billed as a Clancy original, and not part of one of those other series. (The only other hardcover, fictional novel Clancy had previously collaborated on was Red Storm Rising, an adaptation of a videogame he conceived, and not part of the Ryan oeuvre.) Borders offers the following description:
CIA agent Max Moore is a man on a mission. An unholy alliance between Islamic terrorists and Mexican drug cartels threatens the safety of America's southern border. Moore's new team has to infiltrate the warring cartels in order to uncover the plot, but doing that is next to impossible when there's a war on America's doorstep.Whether it's a Jack Ryan story or not, this certainly sounds like vintage Clancy. (Sort of like Clear and Present Danger meets The Sum of All Fears, in fact.) And a vintage Clancy title, too (recalling Richard Clarke's seminal book of the same name on the War on Terror). Actually, I'm surprised he hadn't used it already! So while the next Jack Ryan movie remains in limbo (as reported yesterday), Clancy fans can at least get their fix in print—and plenty of it.
Read more about Against All Enemies here.
4 comments:
Not up to Clancy standards, mostly hack written is my guess.
This is definitely not a Clancy novel, I doubt if he even proof-read this thing. It was boring, not well written, way to much off storyline interludes. Way to much detail on thing not related to the plot and as it was advertised as a Clancy novel I felt ripped off. Returned it for a refund to Amazon. If Tom needs money that bad he should just write another book himself instead of diluting his reputation with junk like this.
I keep hearing that. It's really too bad. I was looking forward to this; it sounded like it might be a return to form for Clancy. Guess not. I probably won't even get it now after reading these comments.
I bet he created the new character specifically for the movies, since he doesn't control the Jack Ryan film franchise having sold it outright. Maybe he figured he'd create a new character, have someone else write the book, and then try to get another movie franchise going? Honestly, even if the book's not good, I could still see it making a good movie just based on that plot description!
I was excited to read my new Clancy novel I just bought at the bookstore; I just paid $40.00 for it. Well I'm 100 pages in and I can't stand it no more; it reads like a Clive Cussler novel. At least he could have done was write a thinner book.
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