The characters include:
Jack Ryan, Jr., adult son of the former President Jack Ryan
Fraternal twins Dominic Caruso and Brian Caruso, who are also Jack Ryan, Jr.’s cousins
Dominic Caruso after studying to be an attorney works for the FBI as an agent. After a crisis happens he is contacted about taking a brand new position with an investment corporation. His twin brother is a Marine officer. He also is contacted by the investment corporation for a position after he proves himself in Afghanistan. The investment company is a cover for a new secret services organization, very secret because it is a private corporation instead of a government agency and the investments are how its secret ops are funded.
The agency was set up by the former President, Jack Ryan, who had been a former CIA agent. He assigns his best friend to run the agency, especially since his gift is making large sums of money from investments. The agency’s purpose is to disable enemies, terrorists, of the United States.
Jack Ryan, Jr. is hired as an ops analyst. The Caruso brothers are hired to be assassins. I felt that the hiring of Jack Ryan, Jr. was realistic considering the explanation for his exposure to secret agents while growing up, but how did he discover the existence of this secret agency? The answer to that was not plausible.
And I did not feel realism when the other 2 new recruits just happen to be 1) brothers, and 2) Jack Ryan Jr.’s cousins.
More unbelievable events:
The dialogue and nicknames the brothers used for each other (it was also annoying). Although the other characters might use additional references usually, an author will choose one pseudonym to refer to each character during his narrative and stick with that throughout, but Clancy bounced around with three pseudonyms for each character, which made following the characters (who is doing what) annoying.
Jack Jr. is talking to his cousins before their first mission and discusses the case and the target. It’s secret ops. Jack Jr. shouldn’t even know his cousins are involved, yet. Plus, none of them have been given permission to talk to the other (analyst vs. assassins) about the mission. Reported by A. Stephen Collins at Amazon.com, “I immediately assume that Jack will soon be in big trouble for his "loose lips." Nope. Clancy never deals with it at all, even though the twins tell their superior that Jack filled them in. (Oh, you told them about this super-classified info without authorization? No problem, kid.) What nonsense.”
I felt the brothers should “vacation” in each location before moving on to the next. It seems to me that as quickly as they were moving and the assassinations were taking place that the “bad guys” might soon notice a correlation. After all, the spy guys in the U.S. do (according to the story).
Rookie Ryan is assigned to be the Caruso brothers’ handler. No agency would have assigned a rookie to be anyone’s handler.
There were only two scenes that I would call action scenes, the rest of the book involved activity but not action, a lot of motion but no real tension.
Unless you’re following the life of Jack Ryan and his family I don’t recommend this book.
496 pages, heavy reading.
ISBN-10: 0-425-19740-9
ISBN-13: 978-0425197400
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