Sabine Weishaupt, 8B Book-report: “Executive Orders” by Tom Clancy About the Author: Thomas L. Clancy, the so called master of techno-military thrillers, was born on the 12th of April 1947 in Baltimore, Maryland / USA. He was educated at the Loyola College in Baltimore. Then he worked as an insurance broker. He is now living in his second marriage after his divorce in 1998. With his first wife he has four children. In college he dreamed of writing novels. In 1984 this dream came true and he got his first novel published, namely “The Hunt for Red October”, which was a great success. Other also well-known works followed, e.g. “Red Storm Rising” (1986), “Cardinal of the Kremlin” (1988), “Debt of Honor” (1994), “Executive Orders”(1996), “Rainbow Six” (1998) and “The Red Rabbit” (2002). Almost each of his books has been a number one best-seller. “Executive Orders” is part of the so called “Ryanverse collection” that means that in all of these books the main character is Jack Ryan or that the other characters have something to do with him. Clancy has also worked with other authors, e.g. with Steve Pieczenik to create the mini-series “OP-Centre” in 1994. All of his stories deal with military, warfare, intelligence, politics and terrorism. Tom Clancy also wrote non-fiction books about submarines, cavalry, the US Air Force and about the Marine and Airborne corps of the US Army. Four of his novels, namely “The Hunt for Red October”, “Patriot Games”, “Clear and present Danger” and “Sum of all Fears”, have been made into quite successful movies. Important characters: - Jack Ryan: President of the USA - John Clark: CIA agent - Domingo Chavez: CIA agent - Edward Kealty: former Vice-President - Badrayn: fundamentalist Contents: The story is a continuation of “Debt of Honour”, where Jack Ryan becomes President of the USA in the end. Jack Ryan is soon confronted with many problems: the former Vice-President Edward Kealty claims that Ryan has no right to be President, the Iran takes the extraordinary circumstances in America as a chance to get power, an Ebola virus is spread over the big cities in the USA, Ryan’s daughter is attacked and so on. In Africa a nun treats a young man bitten by a monkey, but he dies because of Ebola. A few days later the nun is also infected and is flown to Teheran. During the flight, some blood drops out of her and so the virus is spread. In several American cities, Badrayn’s men set down canisters during shows and other events and quickly move away before they spray the content into the air. Soon doctors realize that some people are infected with the Ebola virus and try to find out, how these people got infected. The Iraqi and Iranian TV announces the birth of a new country: the United Islamic Republic! Because of that fact, Russia is worried because there is a threat from the new UIR in the South and the threat of China, which is exercising, in the far East. So the heads of Russia ask Ryan for support and he confirms back-up. Chavez and Clark play an important role because they find out, what is really going on with the biological attack and who the creator of this is. To get the needed information they have to fly all over the world and have to pretend to be Russian journalists again (as in “Debt of Honour”). In the end, everything is good and Ryan holds a speech on TV and there is an interruption and one can see the house of a fundamentalist leader being blasted by a bomb. At last the Jack Ryan confirms that he will run for the Presidential Election. Interpretation: The novel “Executive Orders” is divided into 63 chapters. It is told in an auctorial way – the narrator knows everything and also characterizes the persons, which causes a rather neutral point of view for the reader. It is set in the year 1993 and mostly it is told in a chronological order. Many things happen parallel to each other, but one always knows what Clancy is talking about. The setting changes quite often, so the story takes place in America, France, Africa, Iran, Iraq and Russia. “Debt of Honour” ended with Clancy’s most shocking conclusion ever – a joint session of Congress destroyed, the President of the USA dead. Dazed and confused, the man, who only minutes before had been confirmed as the new Vice-President is now told that he is President. Now suddenly, an unexpected and heavy weight has fallen on Jack Ryan’s shoulders. He does not know how to run a government without a government or where to begin. “Executive Orders is Clancy's most extraordinary novel to date.” “Executive Orders” is the direct continuation of “Debt of Honour”. Jack Ryan is now President after a Japanese plane crashed into the Capitol and he is almost the only one left of the government. The whole world’s eyes are now on him and many countries see their opportunity because a weak President is a weak country. As usual there is not any real interpretation of the novel because its main purpose is to entertain people. So I can only repeat what I have written about the other novels because these things are the important ones for Clancy: One of the main topics in this novel is, as usual, that the good defeats the evil. Clancy describes this process in nearly every book. In “Executive Orders” there is not the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States of America, but the conflict between the Near East and America and conflicts between countries of the Eastern world. So one can see: Ryan is President and the problems become bigger and more complex and difficult because in the other novels there were attacks and “real” wars described, things one is able to handle in a way or another. But here one has to think in a political and intelligent way and this makes everything a lot more difficult. Although for example “Rainbow Six” sounded quite unrealistic, one gets the impression that this time the described things are possible, especially in these days with a war maybe going on and one really has to be afraid of what is going to happen because a strike against a country with biological weapons is not very unlikely. “Executive Orders” is part of the so called “Ryanverse”, which is a term for the books centered around the character of Jack Ryan. In the meantime there are eleven “Ryanverse” books published, but the published order is not the story-line order, which can be a little bit confusing. All in all one is able to understand the context from former books because it is well explained. The Character Jack Ryan: Tom Clancy created a whole story of the life of Jack Ryan so the impression of reading true stories is increased because it seems so real. This could have happened to any other citizen in the USA and so it is no extraordinary thing. One can also see that in a way Clancy describes himself because Ryan is from Maryland (like Clancy) and he later works as a stock-broker (Clancy was insurance-broker). John Patrick Ryan, Ph.D., is the main protagonist of the following novels: “Hunt for Red October”, “Patriot Games”, “Cardinal of the Kremlin”, “Clear and Present Danger”, “Sum of All Fears”, “Debt of Honour”, “Without Remorse” and “Executive Orders”. He is the son of a police lieutenant and a graduate of Loyola High School, Towson, MD. Then he attended Boston College. After finishing the Basic Officers’ Course at Quantico, VA, he deployed to a line unit as a platoon commander. Soon after as a part of the Atlantic Fleet Marine Force (FMF), he was very badly injured in a helicopter crash on the island of Crete. The Navy surgeons at the Naval Medical Center did an incomplete job of fixing his back. This occasioned a lengthy recovery process and he nearly got addicted to narcotics as a result. After that he left the US Marine Corps, passing his stock-broker’s exam and taking a position with the Baltimore office of Merrill-Lynch. Jack did so well there that a senior of the firm, Joe Muller, came to Baltimore to have dinner with Jack, with the objective of inviting Jack to the NYC headquarters. Also present was Joe’s daughter, Caroline Muller, then a senior medical student at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine. Jack and Caroline (nickname Cathy) immediately fell in love. Along the way, while having dinner with his fiancée, Jack had his back blow up. Cathy took him directly to Hopkins, where the Professor of neurosurgery fixed his back. Having made all the money he wanted, Jack left the firm, enrolling at Georgetown University for his doctorate courses in history. Then he accepted a teaching position at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD. One day Father Tim Riley dropped Jack’s name on a CIA contact, which resulted in a brief consulting job at Langley, where he wrote a white paper called “Agents and Agencies”. That is how he became member of the CIA and the rest is history... Statement: I enjoyed the story of this novel. One fact I really liked is that it was not all about good against evil, but also domestic political stuff. The plot is very puzzled out and partly a little bit complicated and not quite understandable, but there was no need to because to my mind it is important to catch the story as a whole one.