Duty and Honor

May 23, 2016
Blackwood's fast-moving second thriller featuring Jack Ryan Jr. (after 2015's Tom Clancy: Under Fire) finds Jack on leave from his secret organization, the Campus. Even though Jack is hampered by the lack of backup and expert assistants, he shows determination and serious spymaster skills as he contends with a mysterious group of Germans who are trying to kill him. After a second attempt on his life, Jack acquires a sidekick, journalist Effrem Likkel, who has been researching a story about René Allemand, a French soldier who disappeared from his post in Port-Bouët, Ivory Coast, where he was part of a peacekeeping mission. Jack and Effrem engage in plenty of fighting and sleuthing as they race around the U.S., Europe, and Africa one step ahead of their pursuers. Blackwood, like Mark Greaney (who has also contributed to the Clancy franchise), is adept at hewing to Clancy's overall vision while producing books that are better written than the Clancy originals. Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, WME.

May 15, 2016
If you're Jack Ryan Jr., the U.S. president's son, you shouldn't waive Secret Service protection, especially if your job at Hendley Associates, a private CIA clone known as "The Campus," makes for double threat exposure.Jack's on forced sabbatical from Hendley, having overstepped his brief. With the downtime, his tradecraft's sloppy, and he nearly succumbs to a knife attack in a supermarket parking lot. Jack later discerns the attack was an assassination attempt, not a mugging. A Hendley investigation into a corporate money laundering case put the bullseye on his back. The assassins have been dispatched by Rostock Security Group. RSG's namesake chief wants to collect a blood debt from Islamic terrorists. He intends a private covert war to be financed by murder, kidnapping, and extortion. Sending Jack in pursuit of bad guys from Virginia to New England to Munich and Namibia, Blackwood's (Tom Clancy Under Fire, 2015, etc.) newest contribution to Clancy's oeuvre turns into 500 pages of firefight. There's bromance here, with Jack being assisted by the nicely sketched Effrem Likkel, son of European "journalist royalty." A newbie searching for a headline, Likkel's fecklessness mirrors Jack's impetuousness. Blackwood's pacing is intense, action-oriented, and mostly bereft of Clancy's paeans to weapons, though technogeeks will get brief appreciations of the assassin's friends: frangible .22 caliber Glaser Safety Slugs and the Eickhorn Solingen Secutor combat knife. Jack isn't afraid to pull his Glock, but his major weapon is a smartphone, employed for everything from Yelp to Google to GPS tracking. Rapid action makes the settings a blur, but intrigue, clear snapshots of peripheral bit players, and snappy dialogue pass the readability and believability tests. Clancy regulars Clark and Cruz remain desk-bound at the Campus, but young Jack finds a balance between his tendency toward lone cowboy recklessness and "spiraling into paralysis by analysis" to thwart the RSG scheme. Action-adventure addicts will get their fixes.

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