Ever since he was a student, the young Thomas dreamed of becoming a writer. In his spare time he sketched characters, action plans and most certainly tried his hand with writing various texts of fiction. That, however, we don’t know for certain. We only know that, much later, in 1984, he finally made his debut with novel The Hunt for Red October.

At the time, the novel seemed an oddity. In the Cold War, Clancy writes about a Russian submarine commander who wants to defect to the enemy, meaning the Americans. With developed technical descriptions, paying more attention than the action’s writing itself, the novel is well received by the public.

Even Ronald Reagan, reveals in an interview that he read a book by a certain Tom Clancy and he enjoyed extraordinarily. That makes the story of Red October submarine to reach the top of best selling books and thus taking the author out of obscurity, launching him into a career mostly would dream of.

Clancy’s Character

In his debut novel, Clancy places a key figure named Jack Ryan. A former stockbroker becoming an CIA analyst overnight. And same as Agatha Christie has Hercule Poirot, as Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes, as many other writers have attached with enthusiasm by a character that they have walked through most of their books, so did Tom Clancy unwittingly “recycling” CIA analyst Ryan in the next book, Patriot Games, 1987. It is talking about international terrorism and the Prince of Wales. More specifically, about Irish Terrorists (IRA) that want to kill Ryan and the Prince.

So Tom Clancy published two years later, in 1988, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, a novel in which we meet John Clark, Amer-Irish Catholic, Ryan’s version of the system. Only the two characters have their first meeting in Clear and Present Danger, 1988, a book that focuses on the war against drugs.

From this point on, the situation is clarified and characters too, our author does not need to make embroider on the both. That is why the following novels (Duel height – The Sum of All Fears, 1991 and Debt of Honor, 1994 Executive Orders 1996, Rainbow Six, in 1998, The Bear and the Dragon 2000, Red Rabbit, 2002) had the main objective of putting the two in the most difficult situations.

Besides all these things it is quite difficult to follow for a neophyte in the clancyan universe (so to speak!), It is mentioned that although totaling thousands of pages, these books are only the base of the Tom Clancy pyramid.

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