Background Info
on novels

Date first published	1990/1991
ISBN Number	0 002 23859 4
Page Count	802 h/b
h/b= hardback : p/b= paperback

Storyline

Terrorism .... The use of terror, violence, and intimidation, usually by an underground or revolutionary group but sometimes to achieve a political end.

October 1973, the Golan Heights. The Syrian army invade hoping to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. During the ensuing panic the Israeli government authorize the issue of nuclear weapons. Cooler heads prevail and the weapons are recalled before being sent to the front. Nearly all...

Israel present day. The Palestinian people discover the route to victory. Face violence with peaceful protest. With peace apparently breaking out, not everyone is happy. The world of the terrorist is fast disappearing. The Soviet Union, the terrorist utopia has fallen to the decadent west, and former allies are now hunting them down. The terrorists embark on a major project to bring down the United States with the seed sown in the desert wastelands of the Golan.

Jack Ryan, back in harness is celebrating potential world peace that is breaking out, and looking forward to what should be a fairly easy period. Fate, and the hatred of the US in certain quarters, leads to the greatest crisis to have ever befallen the United States. The President and his aids, over confident that no major threat exists see no point in rehearsing for a potential crisis. When that crisis (literally) blows up in his back garden, Ryan realizes that neither the President nor his National Security Advisor are capable of dealing with the matter and take the world to the brink of nuclear destruction.

Review

The Sum of All Fears is the start of a trilogy (Debt of Honour and Executive Orders being the others), and lays the foundation for what I regard as two of his best books. The story starts with a simple error back in the Seventies, by the Israeli government and then speeds forward to the modern day, where the terrorist looks to have had his (or her) day. The American government have won the Cold War, and look to be the dominant force in the world and looking for a new role.

The book contains all the elements that we have come to know in the best of Clancy, military and political awareness, extra ordinary detail in the description of the building of the bomb and it's subsequent partial failure. The political back biting that afflicts all governments and almost leads us to Armageddon, to the final moment when summary justice is meted out to the wrongdoers, leads to a wonderfully powerful book.

The authority with which the terrorists ideals and warped view on life is put across is really impressive. On one hand you hate what the terrorists are doing, but on the other, you somehow empathize, with how there lives have been turned around from being 'important' ideological warriors, to that of hunted vermin. Whilst the two are balanced, quite neatly, there is definitely no sympathy with these people, and justice is suitably brutal for two of them.

Ryan as DDI of CIA, is all too aware that although peace has encompassed the world, there are still peoples and countries who wish ill on the US. Ryan, is regarded as an old Cold War warrior whose time has come. It doesn't help that his attitude, has irreparably damaged relations between himself and the NSA Elizabeth Elliot who has the Presidents ear (and bed). Serving out his time before honourable discharge, Ryan is faced with trying to sort out a crisis without all the facts and confusing data from the field. Unable to lie to the President, the President tries to take charge of a dangerous situation, and takes the world to the brink of a nuclear war.

This book at just over 800 pages, is a masterful work, full of artistry, from the thuggery of the foot soldier to the artistry of the bomb maker. Full of suspense you can never be quite sure whether the outcome is going to go in the USs favour, and w whether the nuclear button is going to be pressed.

In my review of The Bear and the Dragon, I stated that Clancy's ham fisted attempts at love scenes, was perhaps his attempts to broaden his writing experience. However there are love scenes in this book, and they are well written, and don't spoil the pace of the book.

The pace of the book is well balanced, the early parts are spent, developing the characters and situations, so that you know exactly why each of the main protagonists is doing what he wants. Qati because, the idea of peace in the Middle East with Palestinians and Israelis coexisting is simply beyond his understanding, and hatred. Bock, because he wants revenge for the death of his (terrorist) wife and loss of his children. Fromme is more complex, made redundant, because his nuclear power plant in East Germany is deemed unsafe, he looks forward to life trapped in an unhappy marriage. The chance to build a bomb would be his ultimate achievement, and has the added bonus that he gets away from the life he hates. Marvin a semi illiterate, brought up on a mixture of lies and half truths about his culture seeks revenge on a government that very publicly (but not intentionally) kills his brother on live tv during a siege that went wrong.

On the other side of the fence sits the 'good guys' who can barely stand each other, and who have very different views on the security of the state. Political Washington is happy to let the military slide into oblivion because the 'War' is over, not realizing that the comparative stability brought about by two roughly equal opponents is going to be greatly missed.

This book is a rip roaring read, with hardly a wasted page or word. This is Clancy at almost the height of his writing.

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