The stirring action begins in the White House, in a typical Clancy scene that not only sets up the premise-a radical American initiative against Colombian drug traffic-but also offers nifty inside-info: that the Oval Office's windows are made of light-distorting, bullet-resistant polycarbonate that the President's chair is backed with bullet-proof DuPont Kevlar. That's no problem, though: the front of the novel, like the rest, is built of geared subplots, each of which has teeth enough to snag the reader. So complex, so intricately researched and detailed is Clancy's newest battle plan that his main hero-CIA-agent Jack Ryan, veteran of three past Clancy novels-doesn't appear until about 100 pages of this 500-page juggernaut have rolled by. This time out, the best-selling ace swivels his big guns away from his usual Russian targets (glasnost fallout?) and toward a nearly homegrown menace: the cocaine lords of Colombia and their deadly white powder.

Disciplined.īut it was still Death, living in the mind of a man.The Great Clancy Thriller Machine rumbles on, engines on full. What had she seen in the face of this man? It took her a moment to answer the question. He'd passed from horror to rage to understanding - then to concealment, but what had come in between comprehension and disguise was the most frightening thing of all. The complete sequence had not taken four seconds, she realized, all of it while Rosen and Douglas had been scuffling against the wall. Then the door closed, Kelly's eyes shut, and when he opened them, his face was unnaturally serene. There had been comprehension to replace the blind, killing rage, and what she'd seen next was the most dangerous sight she had ever beheld, though she knew not why. His hands balled briefly into fists of quivering stone.

The pallor of his face not that of shock, but of rage. The eyes not wide, but focused on something she could not see. Only an instant, like opening a door into some other place, and she'd seen something she had never imagined. Kelly's face turning so white that her first reaction to it was that he must be in shock, then the tumult behind her as she reached for her patient - but then what? 'Sandra O'Toole walked back to the nurses' station, remembering what she alone had seen.

Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy