Debt of Honor. - book reviews

National Review, Nov 21, 1994 by Anthony Lejeune

Do we really want a thriller of such massive proportions that we could not conveniently read it on the bus or in the bath? Perhaps; Alexandre Dumas and Walter Scott wrote at similar length. But is the famous and famously conservative Tom Clancy as good a storyteller as they were? Alas, no; the bulk derives less from the needs of his narrative than from special effects - computers searching, fleets maneuvering, missiles being launched, aircraft shooting one another down.

Jack Ryan, his hero from The Hunt for Red October, ex-CIA, now National Security Advisor to the President, is called on to save America from a double-pronged attack, economic and military, by revenge-seeking Japanese. The scene moves restlessly from place to place, accompanied (on the soundtrack, as it were) by constant technobabble. No one says anything quirky or humanly interesting, because the characters have purely functional roles which must not be blurred. However, the climactic battles are certainly exciting, in the manner of Top Gun or Stallone-Schwarzenegger. And there is a happy ending: most of the politicians in Washington are wiped out.