Patriot Games Review

This Ireland of mine has for long been half free,
Six counties are under John Bull's tyranny.
And still de Valera is greatly to blame
For shirking his part in the patriot game. - Dominic Behan

Having taken himself and readers on a wide detour from his "Ryanverse" in 1986's World War III-themed novel Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy turned his literary sights on John Patrick Ryan, his Everyman antithesis to Ian Fleming's James Bond in his third work of fiction, 1987's Patriot Games.

Although G.P. Putnam's Sons published this entry of the continuing Jack Ryan series three years after The Hunt for Red October was released by the Naval Institute Press, it's actually the second novel in the sometimes confusing timeline created by Clancy, a one-time insurance salesman who had once wanted to serve in the military (he was kept out of the armed services because of poor eyesight), set some time after the events of Without Remorse but before Red Rabbit and The Hunt for Red October; in the latter novel, an American naval officer jokingly refers to Jack as "Sir John" and there are a few oblique mentions of Ryan's involvement in a situation involving terrorists and the Royal Family. 

Set in what seems to be the earky 1980s, Patriot Games' opening sequence is somewhat similar to its 1992 film adaptation except that the protagonist is not yet a Central Intelligence Agency analyst but rather a young history professor and former stockbroker. As the book begins, Dr.Ryan is on a working vacation in London with wife Caroline (Cathy) and daughter Olivia (better known as Sally). On his way to join his wife and daughter after a long day of research for his current book on naval history, Ryan becomes an accidental hero when he literally runs into a brutal terrorist attack on the Prince and Princess of Wales and their baby.

Without stopping to even think about it, Jack, a former Marine second lieutenant and now a professor at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, kills one terrorist and wounds another. He is wounded in the brief shootout, but he survives and earns the gratitude (and an honorary knighthood) of the Royal Family.

Unbeknownst to Ryan, he also gets the attention of two very different groups. At the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, CIA Deputy Director, Intelligence (DDI) James Greer and his boss, Director oif Central Intelligence Arthur Moore are impressed by Ryan's bravery and resourcefulness.  James Greer already knows Ryan is good CIA-analyst material; Jack has done some outside consulting for the Agency. Now Greer wants to recruit Ryan to work full-time at CIA.

The other group whose attention is on Ryan is less savory. It is the Ulster Liberation Army, a far-left extremist faction which has broken away from the Irish Republican Army. While sharing the IRA's desire to rid Ireland of British troops and break away from the United Kingdom, the ULA also wants an Irish Marxist state to rule the Emerald Isle. Thwarted in their bold attack on the Royals and thirsting for revenge against Ryan, ULA leader Kevin O'Donnell and his cohorts free the terrorist Ryan wounded and caused to be tried, convicted and punished, Sean Miller.

This novel not only deals with the shadow-world of terrorism and the agencies that combat this global scourge, but it also delves into the concepts of right versus wrong, honor, and the role of the family in society. Clancy, himself an Irish-American, has little sympathy for the violent means that Irish "freedom fighters" (and pro-British counterparts) have been using in Northern Ireland since 1969. He contrasts the stability of the Ryan family (and the fictionalized Royals) to the moral vacuum of the lone wolves and traitors who make up the ULA. The theme of the book is summed up by a quote by Edmund Burke: "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, and unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

My Viewpoint: Although - as Clancy himself has admitted in several interviews - the writing isn't as polished as that of Frederick Forsythe or Thomas Harris, Patriot Games works better in its original literary version than as a movie.  Sure, Philip Noyce and the screenwriters gave viewers a decent and intelligent "thinking man's" action film, and Harrison Ford performed nicely as an older version of Jack Ryan, but the way the ending was depicted (especially the final third of the story) was simplified too much. 

Particularly interesting is the strong (if somewhat unlikely) bond that is formed by Ryan and the unnamed Prince Charles clone, who was morphed for the film version into "Lord Holmes": in one scene, Jack gives the Prince of Wales a pep talk about bravery and quick thinking after the Royal goes into a funk because he thinks he didn't act properly during the ULA attempt against him and his family.  While it might seem unlikely that a "commoner" (and an Irish-American, at that!) would give the Prince of Wales a lecture on "you did the right thing, dude" and earn his friendship, the scene is a perfect example of Clancy's ethos that the family is the cornerstone of every civilized society.

The ending, too, is less Hollywood-like.  Ryan's final face-off with the terrorists is still action-packed, to be sure, but how he deals with baddie-laddie Sean Miller is nothing like that boat chase-on-the-river finale in Noyce's film version.  Again, like Ryan's talk with the Prince of Wales early in the novel, the ending reflects Clancy's views on personal morality and civilized behavior.  Perhaps this may not be "sexy" or "flashy," but it shows that Ryan, morally and ethically, has "the right stuff."