| Power is delightful, and absolute
power should be absolutely delightful--but not when you're
the most powerful man on earth and the place is ticking like
a time bomb. Jack Ryan, CIA warrior turned U.S. president,
is the man in the hot seat, and in this vast thriller he's
up to his nostrils in crazed Asian warlords, Russian thugs,
nukes that won't stay put, and authentic, up-to-the-nanosecond
technology as complex as the characters' motives are simple.
Quick, do you know how to reprogram the software in an Aegis
missile seekerhead? Well, if you're Jack Ryan, you'd better
find someone who does, or an incoming ballistic may rain fallout
on your parade. Bad for reelection prospects. "You know,
I don't really like this job very much," Ryan complains
to his aide Arnie van Damm, who replies, "Ain't supposed
to be fun, Jack."
But you bet The Bear and the Dragon is fun--over 1,000
swift pages' worth. In the opening scene, a hand-launched
RPG rocket nearly blows up Russia's intelligence chief in
his armored Mercedes, and Ryan's clever spooks report that
the guy who got the rocket in his face instead was the hoodlum
"Rasputin" Avseyenko, who used to run the KGB's
"Sparrow School" of female prostitute spies. Soon
after, two apparent assassins are found handcuffed together
afloat in St. Petersburg's Neva River, their bloated faces
resembling Pokémon toys.
The stakes go higher as the mystery deepens: oil and gold
are discovered in huge quantities in Siberia, and the evil
Chinese Minister Without Portfolio Zhang Han San gazes northward
with lust. The laid-off elite of the Soviet Army figure
in the brewing troubles, as do the new generation of Tiananmen
Square dissidents, Zhang's wily, Danielle Steel-addicted
executive secretary Lian Ming, and Chester Nomuri, a hip,
Internet-porn-addicted CIA agent posing in China as a Japanese
computer salesman. He e-mails his CIA boss, Mary Pat "the
Cowgirl" Foley, that he intends to seduce Ming with
Dream Angels perfume and scarlet Victoria's Secret lingerie
ordered from the catalog--strictly for God and country,
of course. Soon Ming is calling him "Master Sausage"
instead of "Comrade," but can anybody master Ming?
The plot is over the top, with devastating subplots erupting
all over the globe and lurid characters scaring the wits
out of each other every few pages, but Clancy finds time
to insert hard-boiled little lessons on the vileness of
Communism, the infuriating intrusions of the press on presidential
power, the sexual perversions of Mao, the poor quality of
Russian pistol silencers ("garbage, cans loaded with
steel wool that self-destructed after less than ten shots"),
the folly of cutting a man's throat with a knife ("they
flop around and make noise when you do that"), and
similar topics. Naturally, the book bristles like a battlefield
with intriguingly intricate military hardware.
When you've got a Tom Clancy novel in hand, who needs action
movies?
Find 'The Bear and the Dragon' in our BookStore
| 
DVD's
