Thriller Spotlight with Joel C. Rosenberg

For many lovers of political and military thrillers, Tom Clancy is the GOAT (greatest of all time). Launching his writing career in the mideighties, Clancy grasped the spirit and feel of the Reagan-era Cold War. I was a huge fan.

Clancy’s first thriller was a work of genius—The Hunt for Red October (1984), a stunningly intense tale of a Soviet submarine captain who either wants to defect to the U.S. or maybe get close to the Eastern seaboard of the United States and launch his missiles. Wow.

His follow-up was the tense and troubling Red Storm Rising (1986), a 730-page military epic that imagines what it would look like if the Cold War suddenly got hot and boiled over. I also loved The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988), Patriot Games (1987), and Clear and Present Danger (1989), the last two of which became amazing movies. For anyone who wants to know how the military thriller should be written—especially by a guy who never served in the military—immerse yourself in Clancy.

By the time the hammer and sickle lowered for the last time over the Kremlin on Christmas Day 1991, Tom Clancy had established a massive franchise surrounding his protagonist, CIA analyst Jack Ryan. Ryan’s Marine training, brilliant analytic skills, savvy street smarts, yet humble nature gave Clancy the perfect franchise character to pivot to other hot spots around the globe, i.e. Central America, China, Taiwan, and the Middle East. I would anxiously await the annual Jack Ryan thriller and be so jazzed when my wife gave it to me, often at Christmas.

By the late nineties, Tom Clancy had become an industry. In addition to three big screen movies and one made-for-TV movie, he also had a television miniseries to his credit. Then came the first of his spin-off book series, Tom Clancy’s Net Force. No longer was his name relegated to the author’s position. Tom Clancy was now part of the title, while other names were often listed after the word by.

In 2013, Clancy passed away at the age of sixty-six.

Yet nearly a decade later his Jack Ryan saga continues. Only now the Jack Ryan I grew up with sits in the Oval Office. The new protagonist is his son, Jack Ryan Jr. As stubborn as his dad—and a little more reckless—Ryan Jr. is a fresh and intriguing new generation of operative.

The latest offering in the franchise is Tom Clancy Zero Hour: A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel, written by Don Bentley. It is a story that wonders what it would look like if the North Korean Great Leader is weakened, opening the door for a coup and a war to reunify Korea. This is Bentley’s second contribution to the Jack Ryan Jr. series, and in May he released the third book in his own Matt Drake series. He is a master at describing action, particularly hand-to-hand combat. He includes enough detail to paint the scene but leaves space for the imagination to kick in.

Bentley also excels at handling technical information. It is evident that his military service has given him a vast amount of knowledge. Yet he feeds his reader his inside info a little at a time, avoiding the trap of so many thriller writers who overwhelm the military novice with a fire hose full of gadgets, models, and calibers. For example, as a former Army Apache helicopter pilot, Bentley drops details of the aircraft bit by bit by including them in the action rather than in an artificial information dump. After several references to a pilot toggling his comms with his foot, that action, previously unknown to most, becomes firmly lodged in the reader’s cockpit picture. Bentley does this kind of contextual teaching throughout the book.

There are no sex scenes, and initially the language is mild. (However, it increases toward the end as the intensity grows.) If you’re thinking of dipping a toe into the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan Jr. universe, Zero Hour is a great place to start.

—Joel C. Rosenberg