Tom Clancy has died.

I also preferred his early books, but I often find that happening. He wrote good techno thrillers rather than great books, but that doesn't matter because he found the genre that worked for him, and it was what his readers wanted. RIP.
 
I thought it had to be a mistake when I first saw it on the BBC news website, I also prefer his earlier books. Up until Without Remorse, all his books were top notch thrillers and (although I have not read Debt of Honor or Executive Orders yet) and whilst Rainbow Six was good, it was not perhaps quite in the same league.
Red Rabbit and all the books after though just seemed stale and almost forced. Moving towards having terrorists etc as the 'villains' (which did work in Patriot Games quite well) rather than world powers was where I think it all went wrong as it became fairly obvious most of the time what was going to happen and the books just became more mundane and less like thrillers or about spies etc.

Still, its a great loss as he certainly knew how to write a thriller!
 
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Now that is a shame.
Wrote some excellent books.
 
I've been a big fan of Clancy ever since his first book ... got 'em all on the book shelf and my ebook reader.

The plots always sounded not just plausable but real and I usually had a problem putting them down once I'd started reading.

He will be sadly missed by me and many others :(
 
arclight said:
I loved the technical detail in his books.
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I suppose that's what makes books interesting, and appeal to different people. For me, the amount of technical detail is excessive. It's unnecessary and detracts from the storyline. Tom Clancy did it well, but I prefer books that revolve around the characters and develops them as the story progresses.
 
MartynK said:
I suppose that's what makes books interesting, and appeal to different people. For me, the amount of technical detail is excessive. It's unnecessary and detracts from the storyline. Tom Clancy did it well, but I prefer books that revolve around the characters and develops them as the story progresses.
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In my copy of 'The Sum of All Fears', the actual technical details of how the terrorists atomic bomb explodes takes up 7 pages! Being a person with a scientific background and a love of technical details I actually always liked the way that he did things like that though.
 
s162216 said:
In my copy of 'The Sum of All Fears', the actual technical details of how the terrorists atomic bomb explodes takes up 7 pages! Being a person with a scientific background and a love of technical details I actually always liked the way that he did things like that though.
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Also the detail when they were making the bomb, you came away thinking you had enough detail to make one yourself.
 
A very readable author who I will miss greatly. Holidays will not be the same without his latest novel. A sad loss!
 
zlinuk said:
Also the detail when they were making the bomb, you came away thinking you had enough detail to make one yourself.
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If you actually read the afterword at the back theres pretty much a disclaimer from Tom Clancy making clear that he altered or obscured certain technical details to prevent this!
 
Sad loss, I got most of his books in hardback as soon as they came out, but basically gave up half way through Red Rabbit and haven't read any since. Red Storm Rising will remain a landmark in my reading history though.
 
SickAsAParrot said:
Sad loss, I got most of his books in hardback as soon as they came out, but basically gave up half way through Red Rabbit and haven't read any since.
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Red Rabbit was notoriously bad, I read it and was bored within 15 minutes or so in, but kept reading in the hope that something would happen and eventually got to the end without finding it! Plus it made the UK out as a third world country pretty much compared to the 'superior' USA!
 
the later ones with jack ryan junior as hero didn't really work for me - teeth of the tiger was okay, but recoil, dead or alive, and against all enemies were progressively worse and threat vector was execrable.

He should have stopped with the bear and the dragon in my view.
 
s162216 said:
In my copy of 'The Sum of All Fears', the actual technical details of how the terrorists atomic bomb explodes takes up 7 pages! Being a person with a scientific background and a love of technical details I actually always liked the way that he did things like that though.
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That's fair enough, and books are pretty subjective. Many readers have their own preferences about how a story should be told, which doesn't always mesh with the author's approach!

I think quite a lot of people enjoy detail about things they're interested in (aircraft, cars, firearms, cameras, special forces operations etc) which is fine, apart from authors who make silly mistakes. Ian Fleming was known for this, but Tom Clancy generally got it - more or less - right. I do think the disclaimer a previous poster mentioned was more for effect than anything though. A terror group with the knowledge and resources to build a bomb - which some of them probably have - isn't going to rely on a novel for instructions.
 
I've just downloaded Red Storm Rising to read again. I remember thinking it was brilliant at the time.

A recommendation for you that like that kind of thing is a book called Total War 2006.
 
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