Book Review: Tom Clancy’s Commander in Chief by Mark Greaney

 

We lost a literary genius when Tom Clancy died, but Mark Greaney is doing a better-than-average job of keeping the vivid cast of characters – Jack Ryan, John Clark, Ding Chavez, Dan Murray and others – that Clancy created over the decades he spent releasing bestseller after bestseller, and a better job than I thought anyone could.

Greaney’s latest work, Commander in Chief, has Clancy’s name across the top of the cover, a sure way, you’d imagine, of getting people to buy the book. The fact that there’s subtext that says ‘A Jack Ryan Novel’ won’t hurt either, and, not surprisingly, the book is already a New York Times bestseller.

Perhaps not necessarily because of Clancy’s name adorning the cover in font bigger than anything, including the actual book title – although that would certainly help – but because it’s a damn good book, a “ripped straight from the headlines” affair that rockets along at a fantastic clip.

It’s a long novel but doesn’t drag at all, and in the tradition of Clancy, there are many things going on, and, in the last third, they all come together and make sense in the grand scheme of the novel’s plot, which is all to do with a desperate Russian president, Valeri Volodin, deciding to invade Lithuania, and possibly go further than that depending on the opposition he faces.

That opposition comes from the United States, and President Jack Ryan, who is enjoying his second stint in the White House. He’s obviously no fan of Volodin, and worried about what the Russian leader might do to get the power-brokers in that country back on side. The CIA analyst turned President – rightly – suspects that a series of seemingly-random attacks on oil rigs, natural gas facilities, political assassinations and more is being orchestrated by Volodin and Russia as part of a destabilisation campaign prior to an invasion.

Of course, it takes a while for President Ryan’s advisors to completely buy his theory, and it’s pretty much too late, then, because, after most NATO nations voted to not send extra troops into Lithuania to guard against a Russian invasion. Whoops! The invasion comes, and it takes a pretty amazing piece of software to allow the American, Swedish and Lithuanian troops to prevail.

Jack Ryan Jr. and the covert intelligence agency he works for – The Campus, run by Gerry Hendley – has a large part to play in the story, aided by his cousin, Dom Caruso, as well as Ding Chavez and an aging John Clark. The man formerly known as John Kelly is sixty-seven now, but still a formidable opponent for anyone, and Clark, my favourite character from the Clancy universe, has plenty to do in this one.

Other veteran characters, Mary-Pat Foley and Scott Adler have limited roles, and Dan Murray, now Ryan’s attorney general, barely gets a paragraph in this one. That’s a minor disappointment in a book that moves all throughout the world, with our heroes and heroines dealing with contract killers, (Australian!) BitCoin experts, money launderers, stubborn politicians and, of course, Volodin’s army and navy.

Commander in Chief is a hard book to put down, and every Greaney book I read leaves me more and more convinced that he’s exactly the right guy – the only guy – to carry on the Clancy legacy. I’ve got a feeling that Tom would be proud of this one.