Without Remorse ANNOTATION
The bestselling author of The Hunt for Red October goes beyond anything he has ever done with this phenomenal book. Its hero is Mr. Clark, the "dark side" of Jack Ryan, a man very familiar to Clancy's readers. But nothing will ever be as deadly--or as personal--as his new mission. Filled with intricate plotting and knife-edge suspense.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Over the course of seven novels, Tom Clancy's "genius for big, compelling plots" and his "natural narrative gift" (The New York Times Magazine) have mesmerized tens of millions of readers and established him as one of the preeminent storytellers of our time. Without Remorse, however, goes beyond anything he has ever done. Its hero is John Kelly, a man well familiar to Clancy's readers by his code name, Mr. Clark. In The Sum of All Fears, he hunted down nuclear terrorists. In Clear and Present Danger, he led aerial raids against drug lords. In The Cardinal of the Kremlin, he spirited away a KGB chief's family by submarine. But nothing will ever be as deadly - or as personal - as the danger he must face in Without Remorse. John Kelly, former Navy SEAL and Vietnam veteran, is still getting over the accidental death of his wife six months before, when he befriends a young woman with a decidedly checkered past. When that past reaches out for her in a particularly horrifying fashion, he vows revenge and, assembling all of his old skills, sets out to track down the men responsible, before it can happen again. At the same time, the Pentagon is readying an operation to rescue a key group of prisoners in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. One man, they find, knows the terrain around the camp better than anyone else they have: a certain former Navy SEAL named John Kelly. Kelly has his own mission. The Pentagon wants him for theirs. Attempting to juggle the two, Kelly (now code-named Mr. Clark) finds himself confronted by a vast array of enemies, both at home and abroad - men so skillful that the slightest misstep means death. And the fate of dozens of people, including Kelly himself, rests on his making sure that misstep never happens. Men aren't born dangerous. They grow dangerous. And the most dangerous of all, Kelly learns, are the ones you least expect... As Clancy takes us through the twists and turns of Without Remorse, he blends the exceptional realism and au
FROM THE CRITICS
Walter Goodman
The author's narrative technique owes something to the old magazine-writer maxim: Tell them what you're going to tell them; tell it; tell them what you've told them. The dialogue is never elliptical, in, say, the le Carre manner. Everything that anybody might want to know is laid out explicitly and repeatedly. Maybe Mr. Clancy has a short memory span or maybe he assumes that his readers do not pay close attention between the action sequences. Either way, he takes no chances; if you hear a criminal's plan or a police officer's deduction once, you'll hear it again. Our author is without remorse....The nice people in "Without Remorse" and presumably Mr. Clancy's many readers see things Kelly's way. Others may find 639 pages of flapdoodle materially degrading. -- New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Avid readers of Clancy's bestselling techno-thrillers ( The Hunt for Red October et al.) know agent John Kelly, code-named Mr. Clark, as Jack Ryan's ``dark side.'' Here, in 1970, Vietnam vet Kelly gets involved in a secret operation to rescue 20 American pilots from a North Vietnamese prison camp. Betrayed by someone in Washington, the mission ends in apparent failure. Clancy balances the military movements with a dark narrative of Kelly's tragic personal life. While mourning the death of his pregnant wife in a traffic accident, Kelly picks up a young hitchhiker named Pam, a prostitute and drug ``mule'' fleeing her cruel masters. The pair fall in love and set out to bring down the drug lords, but an error on Kelly's part leads to Pam's horrible demise at the hands of the vengeful criminals. After his own recovery from a shotgun blast, Kelly begins methodically to murder his way through the drug ring. Clancy attempts to rationalize this amoral crusade with passages of introspection by characters who are either noble warriors or human scum, but the technique doesn't wash. Although full of failings of style and moral judgment, this overlong, often melodramatic novel seems destined to follow its predecessors to the top of the bestseller lists. BOMC selection. (Aug.)
School Library Journal
YA-Casualties mount as bloodshed continues in Vietnam and ruthless drug pushers attack the unsuspecting on the streets at home. Enter John Kelly, hero of prior Clancy novels, who will wage war on both fronts. In Vietnam he leads a team, but in Baltimore, he works alone, illegally and violently, killing one after another of those responsible for the death of someone he loved. The author is a master builder, creating a cohesive novel with two separate plot lines and a central hero. He pieces together seemingly unrelated scenes and characters much like one constructs a jigsaw puzzle. This technique can be confusing, but good readers will stick with it and get hooked. Kelly is a well developed, complex character-ruthless but tender; confident and nervous; calculating and precise, but occasionally careless, too. The action is fast paced, especially the climax. There is some technical military jargon, but less than in The Hunt for Red October (Naval Inst., 1984). Readers who have previously met Kelly will want to see him through this personal crisis, but beware, Without Remorse is not for the squeamish.-Claudia Moore, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
BookList - Denise Perry Donavin
John Kelly, an ex-Navy SEAL in torment over the recent, accidental death of his wife and the murder of a friend (who was mixed up with a drug ring) takes on two free-lance jobs. First, he sets out to eliminate the man or men responsible for the murder by becoming judge and executioner (skip the jury) of any and all drug dealers who can lead him to the responsible party. Second, he agrees to return to Vietnam (this is 1970), where he has already earned three Purple Hearts. He leads a raid into the north where U.S. officers are being held for interrogation by the Soviets. Clancy could have jettisoned 400 pages and still have retained his complicated plot and his marked hero. There is a good deal of extraneous staging and excuse-making for this commando-turned-vigilante. Once he gets the military action rolling, though, Clancy is in top form; his portrayal of the brutality of street life--while far more graphic--is not nearly so gripping. Clancy is guaranteed to be in high demand, of course, but this one is off the mark just a bit.
AudioFile - Pam A. Johnson
Without Remorse is probably the best work Clancy has done to date at least since Red October but donﾽt expect another techno-thriller. The book has its share of murder, intrigue, military adventure and power corruption, but gone is the technical detail. In its place is an expression of the rough do-it-yourself justice, increasingly found in todayﾽs society. The book has been abridged well for audio and leaves the listener with a sense of completion. Its weakness is in its reader. One has to be a David Dukes fan to appreciate the narration. He imposes himself on the authorﾽs characters so forcefully and completely that they often seem interchangeable. F.S.J. ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine
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