A Tom Clancy book has many characters, all whose role is important in each of his books. I found that as the story Clear and Present Danger unfolds the many characters and their individual traits foreshadow the rest of the story. The history of the drug cartels and the details that are explained regarding the undercover operation is one of the most important parts of setting the stage. This part of the book shows how Tom Clancy chose his title. This particular story takes place in Columbia and America. In Colombia, a war is being waged against the drug cartel. This is a war that I agree with. Drugs are a huge problem in the US. I like how Clancy takes real problems, usually terrorist or drug related and mixes them with intelligence agencies in the US and in Britain as they attempt to overcome these many issues.
I like Clancy’s books. They explore the world providing pictures and perspectives of agents with a unique inside understanding that he creates. I like Clancy’s characterization. His description is vivid, and I feel like I was there with the characters in this book, in the jungle, feeling what they felt right along with them. I enjoy Clancy’s style of writing and how he takes realistic events and intertwines them into several different stories telling both sides of the tale.
I liked that in Clear and Present Danger there is plenty of action. Most of the activity occurs in some Columbian forest, as a specially trained unit of soldiers proceeds with a black operation. Their job is to take out the drug lords and stop their shipments before they can be moved out of Columbia. They also are to cause a struggle for power between the cartels. The operation is going fine. Fewer drugs make it into the US and the price to buy them has risen. When information is leaked and one of the US leaders in charge of the operation is eliminated on a trip to Columbia, the entire operation starts to fall apart. The soldiers then reveal their presence to the cartels, which start to fight back. When this happens, the President orders that the operation be shutdown. He stops all support going to the troops including evacuation, and then to make it harder a high ranking official makes a deal with one of the cartels to have the men eliminated. I would hope that this would never really happen to any of the men and women that keep us safe day in and day out.
Tom Clancy uses many of the same characters in each of his books. I felt that I could understand many of the major players in this book and where they were coming from. My favorite character was Ding, a Mexican-American who grew up in the Los Angeles area. He lived in an area that had rival gangs on both sides of him. This combined with his natural instincts is what helped keep him alive during this operation. Tom Clancy has a way of writing novels so that he implies something about a character but often reverses that implication in another character. Sometimes the main character is a gentle honest man, but his friend will lie and kill for a living.
When I read a Tom Clancy book I like to learn more about the characters and about the different problems that are found in the world. In Clear and Present Danger a realistic problem is portrayed. Answers and consequences to the daily issues that drugs bring are explored. This makes this particular book more fun to read. Not all of Clancy’s books end with a happily ever after, as in this story when only half of the soldiers come home. Clancy writes to always keep you on the edge of your seat as you work your way to the end of his story. I like to try to figure out how the book will end and then be surprised both when I am right and when I misjudge an ending.

Clear and Present Danger details a covert military special-ops mission with the goal of "impacting" the South American Drug trade. In true Clancy fashion, the technical details of the military technology, weapons and aircraft are brilliant, but do start to go stale after the first several hundred pages. The story starts out as quite a page turner and spends quite a bit of time with some of my favorite Clancy characters: Clark and Chavez. I am ambivalent to Jack Ryan, take him or leave him, love him or hate him, he is and always will be the "hero" at the end of the day. Overall this was a good story, though a bit long and drawn out. ( )

The author details each character in a way that you seem to know them. ( )

A rip-roaring techno-thriller at cross-purposes with itself. The early chapter tells the story of a Coast Guard patrol boat in Homeric style, only more long-winded. The novel achieves greatness when it details -- and boy oh boy does this novel love details! -- light infantry training and small-scale covert engagements.

In a nutshell: All the technology and machinery and weapons get highly detailed three-dimensional characterizations. All the humans are treated like cardboard cut-outs, either in sub-Tolkienish moral simplification (evil drug lords vs. heroic American gun-owning patriots) or Ayn Rand-in-miniature political soap-boxing (meaning all liberals are cowardly, back-stabbing effeminate wuss-buckets and all conservatives are all smart, be-muscled, flag-waving uber-patriots).

That being said, it is a well-written techno-thriller with its share of action, heroism, and stuff blowing up. ( )

Typical Clancy military technothriller, this time battling South American drug lords. ( )