The Sum of All Fears (A Jack Ryan Thriller)

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Once again, Tom Clancy manages to add new twists to the alternate U.S. history he initiated in The Hunt for Red October. In The Sum of All Fears, the center of conflict is the perpetual hot spot the Mideast, where a nuclear weapon falls into the hands of terrorists just as peace seems possible. Clancy realistically paints an almost unthinkable scenario--the bomb is planted on American soil in the midst of an escalation in tension with the Soviet Union; the terrorists hope to rekindle cold war animosity and prevent reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

Despite such a dramatic story line, Clancy doesn't neglect the individuals who drive his tale. Jack Ryan's problems are as much domestic as they are part of the international crisis that is the ostensible narrative: National Security Director Elizabeth Elliot has the president's ear, and she has convinced him that Ryan's ethics are questionable. She hints at marital infidelity and an insider-trading scandal. Of course, both accusations are false, but her arguments have enough evidence behind them (e.g. some photographs of an innocent embrace with a friend) to cause a strain in the Ryans' marriage and a flurry of media attention. While "Mr. Clark" tracks the terrorists, he also provides some needed intelligence to heal the Ryan family.

ANNOTATION

The chilling, action-packed #1 bestseller The New York Times Book Review calls" a whiz-bang page-turner"--from the author of The Hunt For Red October and Clear and Present Danger. As Deputy Director of the CIA, Jack Ryan faces the challenge of his career when his proposal for a Middle East peace plan is thwarted by terrorists who intend to destroy Israel--after detonating an atomic bomb on American soil. "Very nearly scoops reality."-- Chicago Tribune.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A NEW WORLD ORDER...ON THE BRINK OF DESTRUCTION

Peace may finally be at hand in the Middle East -- as Jack Ryan lays the groundwork for a plan that could end centuries of conflict. But ruthless terrorists have a final, desperate card to play; with one terrible act, distrust mounts,forces collide, and the floundering U.S. president seems unable to copewith the crisis.

With the world on the verge of nuclear disaster, Ryan must frantically seek a solution -- before the chiefs of state lose control of themselves and the world.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Clancy evolves from storyteller to novelist in his latest techno-thriller, as gadgets take second place to politics and personalities. In the late 1990s the world is cautiously emerging from the Cold War; even the Arab-Israeli conflict is being resolved, thanks to the cleverness of Clancy's hero Jack Ryan. But as confrontation yields to cooperation, what becomes of displaced terrorists? Palestinians without a cause and East Germans without a country seek to rekindle U.S.-U.S.S.R. animosity. A small nuclear device is exploded at the Super Bowl; in Berlin American and Russian troops are tricked into firing on each other; residual suspicions carry the action from there. After the solution of the Middle East crisis serves as an exciting preliminary to the main plot, the novel's middle parts seem a recycling of situations and characters from Red October and Cardinal of the Kremlin. But in the last third of the book Clancy integrates story lines, taking readers on a nonstop roller-coaster ride to a nail-biting finish. Fundamentally, Clancy is writing about a vital and elusive quality: grace under pressure. Whether terrorists or statesmen, Clancy's characters face a common challenge--situations that break down pretensions of rank, power and ideology. Their responses, carefully and empathetically constructed, make this book compelling instead of merely ingenious. (Aug.)

Kirkus Reviews

The master of the techno-thriller places nuclear-weapon technology in the hands of Third World terrorists and sets the superpowers on the path to Armageddon just when everybody thought it was safe to relax. Clancy dishes out page after page of highly detailed atomic bomb assembly directions and nuclear submarine specifications, enough technodazzle to satisfy the most seriously committed technofreak, but it is plain old-fashioned plotting in the best, hair-raising, we're-all-going-to-die-in-five-seconds-if-somebody- doesn't-do-something tradition that keeps things cracking in the very eventful life of Jack Ryan, hijacker of submarines, friend of princes, wizard of Wall Street, true spirit of the CIA, and devoted father. This time Ryan's nemeses are Arab terrorists who stumble on a lost Israeli atom bomb and get big ideas; the cowardly but attractive National Security Director who shares the President's pillow and hates our Jack; and the bottle. It is the last of these plagues that most worries Ryan's pretty ophthalmologist wife and friends. Stressed out by his responsibilities at Langley, unwinding every night with wine-in-a-box, he's gotten paunchy and cranky and unable to fulfill his husbandly role, and he's become vulnerable to the machinations of his archenemy Liz Elliot, the widowered President's favorite advisor. A boozy, discredited Jack Ryan means that the US is in deep danger when the Arabs hire an East German physicist to upgrade their beat-up but still lethal old bomb before placing it outside the Super Bowl game in Denver. With Ryan out of favor there's no one to counter Ms. Elliot's misinformed ravings. The pesky terrorists and their truculent Native American recruit intendthe atomic explosion to stir things up between the Americans and the supposedly defanged Soviets—and they get their wish. Ignoring Jack Ryan, listening to Liz Elliot, everybody in Washington panics, the Soviets get their backs up, bombers launch, submarines crank up their missiles, and thanks to more terrorist meddling, tanks from both sides start blowing each other up in Berlin. Has Jack knocked off the sauce in time to save the world? Clancy swears he has left the critical parts out of the atom bomb directions, and we will all just have to pray that he has. They sure seem complete, though. This is quite a rouser. (Book-of- the-Month Main Selection for August.)