Tom Clancy’s Finest?
Definitely, for me. The book that Ronald Reagan read – maybe the only one? I don’t know, but this is a master exposition of the techno-thriller. Certainly, for most afficionados of thriller novels, this ranks up there with Day of the Jackal, and made Jack Ryan a household name (well almost). It was the foundation of the Jack Ryan film franchise – with novels like Patriot Games and a host of other Clancy novels which followed. Political? Action?Techno? This crosses all the sub-genre boundaries.
Top Secret Technology
The great thing about this book is that the reader really feels that he/she is learning about top secret technology; there is a great deal of factual matter in there. In reality, though, the technology was quite old even when written about. Joe Public learns about these things ten years after they were built. The film, with Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin and James Earl Jones, was an Oscar Winner in 1990 for ‘Die Hard’ director John McTiernan. Of course, Harrison Ford took over as Jack Ryan in the later films of the franchise.
