Rating: 
Summary: Serial killer as a hero
Review: Only Clancy would make a serial killer the hero of a book. The truly sad part is how many other characters in professional positions look the other way. In the past, I have enjoyed Clancy's works. This one went over the limits good taste. I added the second star because like many Clancy works it is well written. I did finish it. Readers should be cautioned that it is a disturbing concept. In the real world, this hero would be seen as an evil villian of Manson or Gacy dimensions.I will admit a personal bias. I am a strong supporter and advocate of local police departments.
Rating: 
Summary: riviting!
Review: This was the first Tom Clancy book I ever read, and picked it up on someone elses recommendation. I was hooked on this book from the first paragraph.
While it is a bit trashy and "best seller-ish" at times, I found it impossible to put down. It was the best read I had had in a long time, and really enjoyed the unexpected turns and twists of the plot,(relentlessly surprising), and the richness of the scene descriptions and humble brillience of the indomitable main character.
Just be sure you have enough time to read it all, because it is hard to put down! What fun!
Rating: 
Summary: A interesting look into the early life of John Clark
Review: Without Remorse is another interesting book from Clancy. It focuses on characater John Clark throughout events which ultimately lead to his recruitment by the CIA and the "death" of John Kelly. This book basically contains two seperate plots, one concerning Clark's quest to avenge a prostitute with whom he fell in love with and whom was brutally murdered by her former pimp/drug dealer and a plot in which Clark is asked upon by the U.S. Navy, specifially Admiral James Greer, to assist in the rescue of POWs in Vietnam. Although both plots occur throughout the telling of the novel, the first half focuses primarily on Clark's personal vendetta against the pimp(and drug dealers in general) while a slow transition takes place during the middle of the novel in which more focus is put onto Clark's planned rescue attempt of POWs. I found the situation with the POWs more interesting, but Clark's personal mission against the drug dealers makes for more defining moments which affect Clark's character.( If you've read Clear and Present Danger you'll understand better Clark's antipathy towards drug dealers more after reading this.) Although these two seperate plots are enough for a book in themselves, I thought Clancy did a good job of making them both interesting and important to the story. Without Remorse makes Clark's past much less mysterious which seems in the bigger picture to be the novel's main function. One gains a lot more insight into Clark's motivations and innner mind. One thing I didn't like about this novel was the fact that's it's not made clear until considerably into the story that this is all taking place during the Vietnam era. Until that was made clear I automatically assumed this was taking place in the present. A very interesting aspect to this book is the connection John Clark has to Jack Ryan's father. I won't spoil what it is, but I thought it was a pretty interesting, albeit not necessary, connection. Clark's actions in this novel, as in others, are very questionable and when reading this one must try to answer that old question of "Does the end justify the means?" Clancy presents a realistic world in which there isn't a clear difference between right and wrong and Clark must struggle to balance the law with justice as they aren't always one and the same. In reading of Clark's actions one must ask themselve what they'd do in the same place and question the morality of those decisions and actions. While reading this novel you can't help but somewhat sympathize with and understand Clark's crude, violent acts, but at the same time acknowledge the fact that these acts aren't completely noble and right. Your sense of morals and ethics clashes with your darker desire to see the terrible people in this novel feel the same pain they've caused others. I feel that this book really deserves a rating between 3 and 4 stars, but since I can't give that I'll give it a 4. Overall, I don't think Without Remorse was as good as some of Clancy's other novels, but it's certainly worth the read if you're a big John Clark fan.
Rating:
Summary: Without Remorse is without equal
Review: A bit of a departure from his high tech thrillers. While there is no shortage of high tech gadgets, they are not the focal point. The focal point is the origin of the mysterious Mr. Clark. Mr. Clark, who began life as John Kelly, is a highly trained and experienced Navy SEAL. While home in the U.S., he crosses paths with a domestic drug ring. If you've ever wondered what a highly trained commando could do to a bunch of ruthless thugs, this is your book. I enjoyed every word of it.
Rating:
Summary: Tom Clancy at his best!!!
Review: "Without Remorse" is the page turner to beat all page turners. I brought this book to Korea with me the first time I went there, knowing that I'd have some spare time at the end of a six week tour there. I was expecting to maybe read half of the book in that time and finish it when I came home. No way! Once I started this book, it was done in less that 48 hours. You simply cannot put this one down for something as trivial as sleeping or eating. Tom Clancy goes into great detail giving the whole backstory on John Kelly/Clark. Once you've read this book, you'll be thinking back on all that came before and after it saying to yourself, "this is how and why John Clark does what he does." It is extremely heart wrenching to read what happens to Pam and how John Clark deals with it. You feel as if you want to be there with him, ready to take out some vigilante justice. I had originally skipped this one and read his next novel, what a mistake that was. Even though I knew that John Clark was in the next novel, I kept saying a prayer hoping he doesn't get killed in this one. That is how good a writer Tom Clancy is. I don't know if there's such a thing as a writer's hall of fame, if not, there should be one with Tom Clancy right there at the top. Thank you very much to Tom Clancy for an absolutely great read!
Rating:
Summary: Great Clancy
Review: I am a fan of Tom Clancy novels. I love the twists and turns and the unexpected situations the characters come upon. Without Remorse definitly held up. The things I disliked about the book were things that would make it not a good book. I generally dislike the language a lot of the characters used, especially those in the drug rings. But I realize that is probably true to life and must tolerate it in that snese. It does serve the purpose of making me dislike the drug cartels even more than I already did, if that's possible. I felt fear and apprehension while Kelly/Clark returns to VietNam. I understood why he did the things he felt he had to do, though terribly wrong in principle. I liked most that Kelly/Clark realized he could not change the world, only contribute in some small sense. If he believed he could right all the wrongs in the world, it wouldn't be as compelling to read. But he wants to typify the idea that good people cannot stand aside and let evil occur, else they are supporting that evil. But he does it with a vigilante type justice that should only be taken up in novels. I relly liked how the Ryan family became involved in the story. If foreshadowed and made me think what would Emmett think knowing his son will soon be under the protection of that 'Invisible Man'? Without Remorse is a definite must to those who are Clancy fans. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Clancy has a new fan.
Review: "Without Remorse" was my first Tom Clancy novel and I do look forward to reading more later on. The main plot is very simple, yet it manages to catch the reader's interest. It starts with former Navy SEAL, John Kelly trying to get on with his life after Nam and losing his wife. He picks up a hitchiker named Pam, who he falls in love with before discovering that she is addicted to qualudes and is a hooker. With the help of two doctors who he also befriends at the same time, they clean Pam up and Kelly talks her into taking her story to an aquaintance, of his on the Baltimore police force. Before they can meet the cop however, both are gunned down by her former pimps and only Kelly survives. After her death, Kelly sets out to get revenge, but gets caught up in a CIA and Military operation to rescue officially dead POWs from Vietnam in the meantime. While I enjoyed the sub-plot as much as the main plot, I can't help but feel the two might have been better had they been two seperate novels all together. Both could have been developed much deeper, but still it was an interesting read. I've noticed some people here have brought up the moral issue around the story. I agree that some of the things Clark does aren't justifiable by any stretch, but I think this demonstrates something that most people never consider about trained soldiers. After WW2, the US military started to condition soldiers to have a higher willingness to actually kill strangers in combat. The question is, what happens when they go back to civilian life? How can someone conditioned to kill without question or guilt truly fit into a society that frowns on such behavior? The book wasn't really trying to address this issue, but it did remind me of this. Also, I must admit that Tom Clancy showed more sympathy to drug addicts and prostitutes than I expected. Pam and Doris' recovery did seem a little too easy compared to real life, but never were they demonized for their former lifestyle.
Rating:
Summary: I have read it twice!
Review: I thought this was a great book. It was full of suspense and action and true to Clancy gave us an inside view of how Clark deals with an urban problem.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat disturbing
Review: I'm hardly a bleeding heart liberal and I thoroughly enjoyed "Dirty Harry" and "Death Wish" (movies that you could really relate to in the context of their time, when it seemed the criminals had more "rights" than their victims) but this book is too much even for me because the vigilante style "justice" that our hero, John Kelly, dispenses to Baltimore's drug dealers and pimps in his quest for revenge is almost impossible to justify. That's the principal plot of this book, along with a somewhat interesting sub-plot that explains how Kelly was recruited by the CIA to set up a mission to rescue some POW's in Vietnam, which in time led to his taking on a full time job with the Agency, along with the alias John Clark. What sets the story in motion is when Kelly encounters a skinny, but attractive girl named Pam who is on the run from a gang of vicious pimps/drug dealers. In the first 100 pages or so, he falls for her, and with the help of a friendly doctor, gets her cleaned up and drug free, only to lose her when the gang spots her riding with him through their turf. Right off the bat this seems like an act of monumental stupidity on Kelly's part. He knows how ruthless these gang types are, yet he brings her back to their neighborhood without putting her in any kind of disguise! What a bonehead! And to top if off, after he initially eludes the bad guys by driving his 4x4 through a muddy lot in which their low riding sports car gets stuck, he then parks just a few blocks away, where the villains track him down and ambush him, giving him a nasty shotgun blast to the arm while taking Pam to be killed in an extremely cruel fashion. The rest of the book is about Kelly's one-man mission of vengeance. He finds that by disguising himself as a wino, he can roam the gang's territory without attracting attention, and he then starts homing in on the gang as he kills off an assortment of small fry dealers in his quest for info on his real targets. And that really is the problem with this book. It is entirely reasonable to cheer him on when he actually starts working on Pam's killers, including a scene where he tortures to death a particularly vicious [man] named Billy, but the rest of his killings are little more than cold blooded murder. True, pimps and drug dealers tend to be human scumbags, but neither crime warrants the death penalty, as Clancy seems to be suggesting. Viewed purely as a work of fiction, "Without Remorse" is basically OK, but in moral terms it comes off as somewhat disturbing.
Rating: 
Summary: trouble in mind
Review: This is my fourth Clancy book. Up until this point, anything Mr. Clark had done was totally justified, whether it was beating up thugs in Sum Of All Fears or all the heroic actions in Clear And Present Danger and Patriot Games. He was one of my favorite characters in those books. But here, I am really troubled by his personal vendetta against pimps and drug dealers. Really troubled. As a previous reviewer said, they're not innocents, but it just doesn't equal cold-blooded murder. I know Clancy is an anti-drug right-winger, and I still like him, but didn't Sir Arthur Conan Doyle do cocaine and heroin? (By no means am I advocating heroin; I've certainly never done it and it scares me to death.) The fact is people like to party. So what happens? Markets spring up. The law of supply and demand. Same with prostitution. The rapists and killers responsible for Pam's death should be avenged, I wouldn't have had a problem with that. But when he goes to New Orleans to rub out the pimp and then kills seven drug dealers on the streets of Baltimore, people who had nothing to do with Pam's death - that's when I lost a lot of respect for "Mr. Clark". One other thing: the torture chamber/scuba tank or whatever it was that he uses on Billy is so far-fetched as to be laughable.
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