Under Fire

June 29, 2015
In this strong addition to bestseller Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series from Blackwood, who collaborated with Clancy (1947â2013) on 2010's Dead or Alive, Jack Ryan Jr., a member of the secret U.S. government organization known as the Campus, gets involved in an elaborate plan to break the Republic of Dagestan away from the Russian Federation and establish it as a democracy. Ultranationalist Russian president Valeri Volodin is determined to foil the plotters, who have lined up Dagestan's interior minister, Rebaz Medzhid, to become the country's new president. When kidnappers take Medzhid's college-age daughter, Aminat, it's unclear at first whether they wish to assure the minister's participation or force him to back out. Either way, Jack must rescue Aminat and help implement the coup. It's a classic case of spy vs. spy with friends and enemy agents being equally dangerous and perfidious. Clancy fans will be pleased to discover that in Blackwood's more than capable hands, Jack remains the all-American hero they remember. Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, WME.

Clancy's gone, but Blackwood (Dead or Alive, 2010, etc.) continues his international action-adventure series by dispatching Jack Ryan Jr. into espionage's "wilderness of mirrors." The elder Ryan is now president of the United States. The younger Ryan's no warrior-statesman. He works instead for Hendley Associates--aka The Campus--a supposed investment group using profits to finance a civilian contractorlike CIA. In Tehran, Ryan's scoping things out after the election of a moderate president. He meets close school friend Seth Gregory, who's supposedly in Iran on oil business. The next morning, Ryan is informed by two shadowy characters that Seth has disappeared. He learns that Seth is CIA, and Seth's father, Paul, was a Cold War "golden boy" of the CIA's Intelligence Directorate. Paul was branded a traitor and committed suicide. Seth intends to use one of his father's plans to free Dagestan from a Putin-parody Valeri Volodin, the Russian Federation president. Blackwood's character development is drowned out by page upon page of pistol and rifle fire--and computer/cellphone phishing--from Iran to Dagestan. Settings are green-screen backdrop maps. Blackwood introduces beautiful Iranian Ysabel Kashani, who rescues (and beds!) Jack. Bad guys are rogue British agent Wellesley, willing to kill to foil Seth's plan and maintain stability, and Russian Oleg Pechkin, who manipulates both sides under multiple names but mostly offstage. The narrative is continuous action and derring-do, with Jack relying on instantaneous satellite-phone links home to Hendley for intel, all while flying to Scotland to rescue a Dagestan leader's daughter from kidnappers and then knocking out a "Borisoglebsk-2...specifically designed to take down satellite and GPS systems" to ensure the Dagestan democratic revolution reaches social media. A complex international adventure that's less military hardware-centric than Clancy solo, but Blackwood uses "notional," which fans will know is homage to the maestro. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.