Disclaimer

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

From Publishers Weekly

There's not a shot fired until page 602 in Clancy's lumbering new thriller, and readers up on their history will know the outcome of that shot on page 17. What comes in between is a slow-moving but, given Clancy's astonishing flair for fly-on-the-wall writing, steadily absorbing imagining of the back story behind Mehmet Ali Agca's (real-life) failed attempt on the life of Pope John II in 1981. By going back 21 years, Clancy provides a fresh adventure for a young Jack Ryan, but Ryan fans (and presumably Ben Affleck) may be surprised to learn that Ryan is, until the final scenes, only a supporting player here. The book's main heroes are the husband-and-wife team of Ed Foley, CIA station chief in Moscow, and his agent-wife, Mary Pat, and Oleg Zaitzev (code-named Rabbit), the mid-level employee in the KGB communications department who for conscience's sake decides to defect to America when he's asked to encrypt messages that reveal a plot, under the auspices of then-KGB chief Yuri Andropov, to kill the pope in response to the pontiff's secret letter threatening to resign the papacy and to return to Poland to resist Soviet domination. In real life, the pope wrote such a letter, and analysts have long speculated that the Soviets, via Bulgarian controllers, dispatched Agca to kill him. It's utterly fascinating to read Clancy's playing out of that likely scenario is there a writer in the world who brings so much verisimilitude to scenes both high (Politburo meetings) and low (details of spy craft and everyday Soviet life)? But while Clancy delivers a believable and encyclopedic version of real-life events, the suspense is minimal a disappointment when other writers (Forsyth in Day of the Jackal, for one) have shown that there can be enough tension in a fated-to-fail assassination plot to give a stroke to a yoga master.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Clancy returns to Jack Ryan's first days in the CIA, when the fate of the free world hung in the balance as Ryan discovered a heinous plot to assassinate the Pope. Clancy is so big that this new novel merits a special limited edition (ISBN 0-399-14914-7. $150).
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

TOM CLANCY'S GREATEST CHARACTERS FACE THEIR DEADLIEST CHALLENGE After almost a decade, Tom Clancy--the acknowledged master of international intrigue and non-stop military action-returns to the world he knows better than anyone: a world of chaos, caught in the crossfire of politics and power, placed on the edge of annihilation by evil men. But there are other men who are honor-bound to stop the bloodshed and protect their homeland-by any means necessary... It is called the Campus. Secretly created under the administration of President Jack Ryan, its sole purpose is to hunt down, locate, and eliminate terrorists and those who protect them at will, without sanction or oversight. A self- sufficient entity, it has no official connection to the American government-a necessity in a time when those in power consider themselves above such arcane ideals as loyalty, justice, and right or wrong. Covert intelligence expert Jack Ryan Jr. and his compatriots at the Campus have waged this silent war in every corner of the world. Now joined by two of his father's closest allies-black ops warriors John Clark and "Ding" Chavez, as well as Brian and Dominic Caruso and Mary Pat Foley-the Campus has come up against its greatest foe: a sadistic killer known as the Emir. The mastermind of countless horrific attacks, the Emir has eluded capture by every law enforcement agency in the world-a fact which the Campus is determined to change. But his greatest devastation is yet to be unleashed, as he plans a monumental single strike that will destroy the heart of America, unless the Campus can take him "Dead or Alive." On the trail of the Emir, Jack Ryan Jr. will find himself following in his legendary father's footsteps on a deadly manhunt that will take him and his allies across the globe, into the shadowy arenas of political gamesmanship, and back onto U.S. soil-in a battle to prevent the fall of the West... Together for the first time, an all-star cast of Tom Clancy's characters race to ensure the nation's survival and to complete their mission: the desperate search for a madman who may be hiding in plain sight.

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