The Sum of All Fears

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Summary: I think that this book is one hell of a book.
Review: Tom does it again. I have read this book at least six times and I know it by heart. I think that this book is one of the best books by Tom Clancy.

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Summary: THE BEST BY TOM CLANCY
Review: This is by far, the best book with Jack Ryan in it, and by far the best book by Tom Clancy. Believe me, I read almost all his works (only Red Strom Rising is missing) and I definitely recommend this to anyone- males and females alike. It really give an insight on how the people at Washington operates and how one stupid President and can almost make a destructive move. It is not easy for Jack Ryan to face both outside and inside enemies. The climax is the best and it really showed you don't need to go out there and killing people to have a good action book. Read it- you don't know what you miss.

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Summary: Clancy's best so far, and one of the best EVER of its genre
Review: Ranks with the best of Fredrick Forsyth's poltical/military thrillers. In terms of the complexity of the plot, the development of characters, and most of all the chillingly real terror of its premise, this book is stunning. People will be reading it for decades--one hopes NOT because its story ultimately came true. The scene in which the red phone on the President's coffee table rings is one of the most thrilling I've ever read. A masterpiece of its genre.

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Summary: So far so good
Review: This is more a comment than a review, but hope you won't mind. I have been playing "catch up" on Clancy's books this summer, trying to save the latest for last.

I finished Debt of Honor and then Sum of All Fears. Then just started Without Remorse. Have gotten to the rehabilitation stage, just really getting into the story so far.

Here's how I found Amazon. Our Rhodesian Ridgeback hound is a big baby and spoiled rotten. I placed the book, Without Remorse on my bedside and went out. When I returned, I found it shredded. So, have to buy another one to finish novel. NOW.

My son e-mailed me this website and found you to order new copy. And may I say, a much less expensive one, from the price I see on the web.

Now, don't think for a minute that the Ridgeback was making a literary comment. She is just jealous that Clancy novels are taking so much of my time and I am enjoying them instead of playing with her.

And I have. Guilty of same.

Can't wait to get new copy and start reading again. In meantime, I am reading the book in loose partial pages.

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Summary: Did he read Clinton's horoscope before he wrote this book?
Review: Just finished Sum of All Fears. We all know that no matter how high one climbs that person still has his basic character that overrides all judgements and thoughts.

Do we have a President with the weak character that would prefer to start a nuclear war to leaving office? I don't want to give away the end, but just as I was finishing that book, to start on Without Remorse Clinton was making threats to attack one more country with the same military that he has dodged and dismantled.

Tom Clancy reminds me that character does matter. But I never forgot that.

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Summary: This Book Proves Jack Ryan is America's James Bond!!!!!
Review: America's James Bond is back--better than ever before in a novel so thrilling and exciting, not even Ian Fleming could have imagined it (albeit, he came close in Moonraker). In it, Ryan invisions a plan for world peace on an epic scale--only to cause an indirect war with wrathful terrorists who would stop at nothing to bring America and the Ryan Plan to its knees. But that isn't all. Besides building the Peace Plan--known as the Vatican Treaty--he must deal with enemies within, who, too, would stop at nothing to personally see Jack Ryan's destuction. Between an egomaniacal President and a backstabbing National Security Advisor, Ryan has his hands quite full, leaving him on the verge of collapse. Ah, but that isn't all. The intricate icing on this complex cake is a nuclear bomb going off in a major metropolis! Now, with a war on the verge of nuclear, Ryan must steel all his strengths (for so much has already been drained) and figure out just how he can save himself and his world from Apocalypse. It's a high tech masterpiece with a great many pages you may not finish (a little too descriptive at times), but it's still the best novel I have ever read so far in the Ryan series. To me, James Bond would be proud!!!! Believe it!!

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Summary: Dangerously Real
Review: Having had access to nuclear weapon design information, and been trained in the "how to's" of rendering the weapons safe in the event of an incident or accidental arming I KNOW how easy the building of a crude weapon could be given today's technology and information highways. Clancy is so accurate (as always) with his description of the fabrication of the weapon that it is frightening. The boys at AEC or Lawrence-Livermore probably had coronaries when they read this book.

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Summary: The most intensive Tom Clancy novel since "Red October"!!!
Review: This is one of Tom Clancy's best works yet. He shows that he can be a progressive writer, by showing us a different look at the heroic Jack Ryan. I am very impressed with the sheer intensity of this book. There is a line in the book that is used to describe DefCon ONE and I think it applys to the feel of the book. It basicly says that the Americans and the Russians have their guns out and they're pointed at each other and the saftey's off and their finger is on the trigger feeling its preasure. I have yet to read the next in the Jack Ryan series, but I am looking forward to it.

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Summary: Bringing out what makes Clancy great.
Review: I think that "The Sum of All Fears" is by far Clancy's best work. I have read all of his stuff several times over, and this continues to amaze me. He develops real characters with real feelings in a plausable, exciting, nail-biting adventure. His latter books seem to long and ponderous, and lack the total suspense of this novel. The hot-line by-play of Naramov and Jack Ryan is some of the best stuff I have ever read.

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Summary: The President of the United States wants Ryan out
Review: Jack Ryan, now DDI, (Deputy Director of In- telligence), the post his mentor, the late Admiral James Greer, once held from The Hunt for Red October through Clear and Present Danger, is on the outs with the Fowler Administration. J. Robert Fowler, a Clintonesque POTUS, is a widower who lost his wife to cancer. He's so starved for affection that he turns to his Deputy National Security Advisor, Elizabeth Elliott. Elliott, a Super Bitch of the First Order, causes the death of her predecessor, Dr. Charles Alden, a man whose ancestry goes back to the Mayflower, suffers a stroke and dies. This after Alden, Ryan, and Father Tim Reilly, meet at the Georgetown Club to bring peace to the Middle East. Elliott, a viru- lent anti-Semite, finds Alden's Achilles' heel, a paternity suit filed by a former student named Marsha Blum, whom he got pregnant, and is apparently the father of her child. The Israeli Cabinet agrees to the Ryan pro- posal, which calls for the Vatican to be in c! harge. The Ryan Plan calls for Jerusalem to be run by a triumvirate of religious leaders--Christian, Moslem, and Jewish. Arab terrorists discover an Israeli nuclear bomb and decide to use it against the United States. Ismael Qati, Imbrahim Ghosn, Marvin Russell, a member of AIM, and German terrorist Gunther Bock, recruit Dr. Manfred Fromm, a nuclear physicist from East Germany's nuclear program to rebuild the bomb. The bomb goes to Denver where Minnesota and San Diego are about to play in the Super Bowl. Elizabeth Elliott, now Fowler's National Security Adviser, mounts a dirty tricks campaign against Ryan. Mr. Clark, and his protege, Ding Chavez, at the request of Cathy Ryan, look into it. They talk to Bob Holtzman, part of the husband-and-wife team who cover the White House, and he burns his source, Dr. Elizabeth Elliott. At a state dinner, Cathy Ryan and Elliott meet.

At Camp David, the President and Elliott settle in to watch the Super Bowl when the bomb goes o! ff. Everyone, including the Secretary of Defense, is killed! in the attack. Qati and Ghosn kill Mar- vin Russell after his usefulness to them is over. In a fit of anger, Fowler orders America's ICBMs targeted on Qum, Iran, the home of the Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Drayaei. Clark and Chavez get Qati and Ghosn and interrogate them. Elliott suffers a nervous break down and has to be sedated. Qati and Ghosn face Islamic justice in Saudi Arabia. Ryan receives the sword that beheaded them, the Breeze of Evening. Ryan meets with Darayaei and he lectures him on his religion's strict hospitality laws. Darayaei wants to know how he knows about Islam. Ryan replies that he'll be surprised. This isn't the last time this bad penny will turn up.