[SamAdams76]

I agree that Clancy is a pretty bad writer. A hack, even. His attempts to get Jack Ryan's wife and kids into the flow of the stories are downright embarrassing. Cathy Ryan is a joke. I mean, here is Jack Ryan putting in 100+ hour weeks with the CIA and his wife somehow manages to raise perfect children while working at John Hopkins as their top eye surgeon. Yeah, right!

But he comes up with some good plot lines and his technical research is top-notch, especially with respect to military tactics and gadgetry.

[brbethke]

Ah, I get it! Jack Ryan is actually ....

Buckaroo Banzai!

[Revolting cat!]

That NYTBR review I referred to, which was right on target, was quite famous in literary circles because it sparked a feud between Clancy and Buckley that was conducted over fax machines. An interesting exchange of insults and opinions. (Parts of it were published somewhere.) For some reason I can't find any references to it on the web. It hasn't been more than 10 years.

Anyway, the single thing I remember now from Buckley's review, which is what triggered my memory here, was that he said the book, whatever its title, read less like a novel than like a movie treatment, ready to be turned into a shot by shot screenplay.

[RightWhale]

here is Jack Ryan putting in 100+ hour weeks with the CIA and his wife somehow manages to raise perfect children while working at John Hopkins as their top eye surgeon

For those of us raised on Robert A. Heinlein such characters are exactly who should populate novels.

As far as his writing skill is concerned, consider the huge volume of coherent sentences he produces [or used to produce] in a year. It's hard to argue with someone who can kill entire rainforests and cause printer's ink to be purchased by the trainload just by pushing a few keys on a typewriter or scribbling a little with a fountain-pen.