Patriot Games is a thriller about good guys trying to stop terrorists before they can do bad things.
Jack Ryan, an ex-Marine and naval history professor at Annapolis Military Academy runs afoul of an ultra-nasty IRA splinter group while on vacation in London with his ophthalmologist-surgeon wife and four-year-old daughter.
When the disaffected IRA members stage a terrorist attack on the Prince and Princess of Wales right in front of him, Ryan responds saving their lives and making a deadly enemy.
With the British on high alert after the attack, the terrorists decide to strike in America, where Irish terrorists have never struck.
A planned visit by the royal couple to America and to their new friends, the Ryan family, offer the terrorists an ideal target.
A terrible thunderstorm just as the terrorists’ strike adds to the drama.
What makes the Patriot Games unusual is that author Tom Clancy focuses heavily on the different psychological characteristics of the good guys—U.S. military, the CIA, FBI, police, and their British counterparts—and the bad guys.
There’s nothing particularly startling about Clancy’s observations, but the personal angle makes a pleasant change from descriptions of weapon systems and intelligence analysis procedures.
Patriot Games by Tom Clancy
Putnam, ©1987. 540 p
1987 bestseller #2; my grade: B
©2019 Linda G. Aragoni
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