sbenzell 's review for:

Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy
2.0

Tom Clancy's novels decline pretty quickly in quality beyond The Hunt For Red October. The good guys become too invulnerable, the villains too mustache twirling, the thrills less thrilling.

This is the last good one. Rather than be confronted with a problem that can be solved through direct military action, the US must deal with asymmetric attacks on its economy, navy, and some allied islands. No essential US interest is at stake from the overt attacks, and the enemy claims to have a nuclear deterrent. This is the kind of situation you could see the US having to deal with from North Korea or Iran someday. How would you, the reader, deal with this crisis?

Of course
SpoilerJack Ryan saves the day, as we learn he inevitably must
, but did he really? Consider the ending of the novel
Spoilerin which, spookilly precongnizant of 9/11 a vengeful pilot - mournful over the deaths of his relatives at the hands of Jack Ryan's victorious military actions - guides his 747 into Congress
. Perhaps, unintentionally, Clancy makes a case for pacifism after all.