Tom Clancy

[Trillipse]

I recently read a novel by Tom Clancy - "Op Center".

I read it purely because I found it somewhere, and don't like to see books being discarded. When I ran out of things to read, I read this.

It was very, very badly written, and although vacuously involving, the plot really wasn't up to much either.

How come this stuff is popular - or is that a tautological question........?

[Quizmonster]

You're absolutely right, Trillipse! At last someone agrees with me that Clancy is utterly hopeless.
Here's how I think he writes his novels. He takes one of these little notebooks such as children learning French used to be given in order to make themselves a small dictionary. He writes the entire story in that and then says to himself, whilst looking at Sentence No 1: "Now, how can I expand that into a paragraph or - even better - a whole page?"
He then works his way thus through the tiny booklet until he's got a novel's-worth of words. They may end up very well researched during the process, but the vast bulk of what he discovers is totally irrelevant.

His books are rubbish!

[Hamish]

It would depend on why you read at all. I read for several reasons, not all always the same ones. Usuall it is to escape and Mr Clancy helps that quite well where others might fail.

[LeMarchand]

Not a fan of Mr Clancy: the one I read was far more interested in showing off how much research the author had done than telling a story (though I've enjoyed the movies). To be fair to him, though, aren't the "Ops Centre" novels written by someone else and just endorsed by TC?

[BigMac]

Agree with LeMarchand. The Ops Centre books are a money-making venture on the back of Clancy's name.

As escapist thrillers, though, I quite like Clancy - you just have to immerse yourself in his world view and suspend all your normal critical (political) faculties. Cold-war spy thriller becomes a war-on-terror (yes, I know it's an abstract noun - how can you wage war on a noun?) and now the (former) President's son has become a semi-licenced hitman....

Now what about Martin Cruz-Smith? Is his latest Arkady Renko book worth reading (I've read the others)?

[Trillipse]

perhaps i have been too ha(s)tily condemnative re: mr clancy?

[andy hughes]

I tried one of his novels, and it put me off reading any more. He is obviously popular - he gets his name over the titles on the covers, but what ever his appeal is, it didn't reach me at all.

[Glossopswift]

I got stuck at Chicago O�Hare airport a few years back and the choice of books wasn�t too grand. I bought Patriot Games thinking it would be a good thriller. Now I haven�t seen the film but I think I�m right in saying that it isn�t Prince Charles and Di that feature in the film. Clancy�s depiction of Charles is hilarious! It was about 14 years ago I read the book so I hope I�ve remembered the right bit � at the end there is a boat chase and Prince Chuck is an all action hero. Spectacularly bad, in my opinion, but I still stand by what I�ve said on AB before � it�s better to read bad books than not read at all.

[Celtigra3]

Life is too short to read bad books! Discard and find another. No one will shoot you if you don't finish something you are not enjoying.