Patriot Games (Jack Ryan)
by Tom Clancy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tom ClancyEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1988-07-01
ISBN: 0425112187
Number of pages: 512
Publisher: Berkley
Book Reviews of Patriot Games (Jack Ryan)
Book Review: Needs some editing
Summary: 4 Stars
It's my habit with books that are made into films that I like to see the film first, then read the book to get the rest of the story. Inevitably large chunks of the written story have to be cut out for the sake of time, and Patriot Games is another that falls into this category. It's also one of those stories that gets reworked rather radically for the screen, but the filmmakers fortunately were able to capture the general tone of this novel quite well, I think. That makes the movie introduction of two major characters, and the deletion/reduction of several others, more palatable. Patriot Games has the distinction of being one of the few such works I've read/seen that manage to be very different yet quite satisfying in both media, and in fact there's so much fat in the novel that was trimmed out for the screenplay that it makes the reader positively yawn at some points.
Hey, far be it from me to squawk about the length of a novel. I mean, Crime and Punishment remains a personal fave, and it drones on and on.....but does so in an excrutiatingly fascinating way.
The main flaw in Patriot Games, however, is that it does go on a bit too much, wandering sometimes into places where it has no business. But that one flaw, however distracting, cannot change the fact that Clancy does an expert job of drawing the characters with such fine brush strokes and detailing the action so carefully that his pace works beautifully, so that the too-slow first half of the book gives way to a compelling final few chapters. Still, it's a good thing I'm patient or I would've given up too soon.
In reading Patriot Games, one cannot help but visualize Harrison Ford, Samuel L. Jackson, James Earl Jones, etc., in the roles written by Clancy in this story of Irish terrorism, written in 1987 long before Middle East problems so rudely interrupted our blindly idyllic American bliss. An IRA splinter group has been thwarted in a violent attempt at the Royal Family (thinly veiled Charles & Diana, back when they seemed happy), and our hero Jack Ryan is the one who stopped them. The motivations are different in the film, and more compelling, actually, one of the rare moments when I believe a screenwriter improves on his/her source material.
God bless Clancy for his stubborn insistence on making the heroes of this story out to be real heroes, rather than the flawed antiheroes of our recent past, and for showing us a married couple who is still madly in love and passionate for each other sexually, Charles & Di notwithstanding. Most storytellers in various media seem intent on showing that unmarried sex and romance are more exciting, which is usually bunk, and Jack & Cathy Ryan are fictitious personifications of this.
I'm giving Patriot Games a very mixed almost-four stars, because it did gather enough steam to become a real page-turner, but I really prefer the perfectly-paced movie version. Somebody really needed to trim the fat for Clancy, and apparently it took a screenplay to keep his story from meandering too far.
Summary of Patriot Games (Jack Ryan)
The phenomenal bestselling author of The Hunt for Red October and The Sum of All Fears, Tom Clancy is one of America's most acclaimed storytellers.
Now he targets a CIA analyst and his family in the deadliest game of our time -- international terrorism.
In an explosive wave of violence, an ultra-left-wing faction of the IRA hunts one man for his act of salvation in an assassination attempt. And now he must pay . . . with his life.
Now he targets a CIA analyst and his family in the deadliest game of our time -- international terrorism.
In an explosive wave of violence, an ultra-left-wing faction of the IRA hunts one man for his act of salvation in an assassination attempt. And now he must pay . . . with his life.
The bestselling author of Red Storm Rising and The Sum of All Fears brings Jack Ryan back in his to fight his deadliest battle yet.
From England to Ireland to America, an explosive wave of violence sweeps a CIA analyst and his family into the deadliest game of our time: international terrorism. An ultra-left-wing faction fo the IRA has targeted the CIA man for his act of salvation in an assasination attempt. And now he must pay ... with his life.
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