Executive Orders » (Abridged)

Known for originating the techno-thriller genre, Tom Clancy writes complex novels dense with hardware and international intrigue. Perhaps the strongest indication of his power as a writer is the fact that he is often treated by the media like a character in one of his books, asked for opinions about military readiness and the subject of rumors about being debriefed by the Pentagon. Not bad for a former salesman who was rejected for service because of bad eyesight.

I don't know what to do. Where's the manual, the training course, for the job? Whom do I ask? Where do I go?"

Debt of Honor ended with Tom Clancy's most shocking conclusion ever: a joint session of Congress destroyed, the President dead, most of the Cabinet and the Congress dead, the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs. Dazed and confused, the man who only minutes before had been confirmed as the new Vice-President of the United States is told that he is now President.

President John Patrick Ryan And that is where Executive Orders begins. Ryan had agreed to accept the vice-presidency only as a caretaker for a year, and now suddenly an incalculable weight has fallen on his shoulders. With stunning force, his responsibilities crush in upon him. He must calm an anxious and grieving nation, allay the skepticism of the world's leaders, conduct a swift investigation of the tragedy, and arrange a massive state funeral - all while attempting to reconstitute a Cabinet and...

Publishers Weekly

At 896 pages, half a million words and nearly four pounds, Clancy's new novel is a bruiser. It packs a whale of a wallop too, starting with a knock-down premise set up in Debt of Honor, which ended with a jetliner crashing into the Capitol, taking out the president, congress, the cabinet and the Supreme Court justices. As the new novel opens, longtime Clancy hero Jack Ryan, named minutes before the crash to the post of V.P., has just been sworn in as chief of state. What's it like to be thrust into the world's hottest hotseat? Clancy has, in effect, written three novels in one here. The first, running about 200 pages, deals with that question in brilliant detail the crushing of Ryan's personal life as he's sucked into the vortex of presidential duty and scrutiny; the tentative acceptance of ultimate power and responsibility as he realizes he is The Man. Within this scenario, Clancy seeds his other major story lines. Domestic opposition to Ryan and to his grassroots American values is stirred up by venal politicos, fat cats and corrupt media types as Ryan tries to rebuild the government along conservative lines. Foreign trouble arises in Iran, meanwhile, which subsumes Iraq and unleashes biological warfare on the U.S., allowing Clancy to toss in a medical thriller-within-a-thriller that holds its own with Cook and Palmer. Like a savvy crooner saving his hit songs for the encore, Clancy waits until his final 150 pages to give readers the stuff that put him on the map: here, strutted in a fury of air, sea and land battles between Yanks and "rag-heads." As usual, Clancy offers no moral middle ground, only white hats and black; he also soapboxes mercilessly for a radically right agenda. He's a war-gamer without peer, though, and his plotting here is masterful, as is his strumming of patriotic heartstrings. This is heavyweight entertainment, and come pub date it's going to be the world champion of the bestseller lists.