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Jack Ryan Universe #1
Without Remorse
John Kelly, former Navy SEAL and Vietnam veteran, is still getting over the accidental death of his wife six months before, when he befriends a young woman with a decidedly checkered past. When that past reaches out for her in a particularly horrifying fashion, he vows revenge and, assembling all of his old skills, sets out to track down the men responsible, before it can happen again.
At the same time, the Pentagon is readying an operation to rescue a key group of prisoners in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. One man, they find, knows the terrain around the camp better than anyone else they have: a certain former Navy SEAL named John Kelly.
Kelly has his own mission. The Pentagon wants him for theirs. Attempting to juggle the two, Kelly (now code-named Mr. Clark) finds himself confronted by a vast array of enemies, both at home and abroad - men so skillful that the slightest misstep means death. And the fate of dozens of people, including Kelly himself, rests on his making sure that misstep never happens.
Men aren't born dangerous. They grow dangerous. And the most dangerous of all, Kelly learns, are the ones you least expect...
As Clancy takes us through the twists and turns of Without Remorse, he blends the exceptional realism and authenticity that are his hallmarks with intricate plotting, knife-edge suspense and a remarkable cast of characters.
652 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 11, 1993
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About the author
Tom Clancy
977 books9,058 followersThomas Leo Clancy Jr. was an American novelist and military-political thriller pioneer. Raised in a middle-class Irish-American family, he developed an early fascination with military history. Despite initially studying physics at Loyola College, he switched to English literature, graduating in 1969 with a modest GPA. His aspirations of serving in the military were dashed due to severe myopia, leading him instead to a career in the insurance business.
While working at a small insurance agency, Clancy spent his spare time writing what would become The Hunt for Red October (1984). Published by the Naval Institute Press for an advance of $5,000, the book received an unexpected boost when President Ronald Reagan praised it as “the best yarn.” This propelled Clancy to national fame, selling millions of copies and establishing his reputation for technical accuracy in military and intelligence matters. His meticulous research and storytelling ability granted him access to high-ranking U.S. military officials, further enriching his novels.
Clancy’s works often featured heroic protagonists such as Jack Ryan and John Clark, emphasizing themes of patriotism, military expertise, and political intrigue. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, he became one of the best-selling authors in America, with titles like Red Storm Rising (1986), Patriot Games (1987), Clear and Present Danger (1989), and The Sum of All Fears (1991) dominating bestseller lists. Several of these were adapted into commercially successful films.
In addition to novels, Clancy co-authored nonfiction works on military topics and lent his name to numerous book series and video game franchises, including Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell. His influence extended beyond literature, as he became a part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team and was involved in various business ventures, including a failed attempt to purchase the Minnesota Vikings.
Politically, Clancy was a staunch conservative, often weaving his views into his books and publicly criticizing left-leaning policies. He gained further attention after the September 11 attacks, discussing intelligence failures and counterterrorism strategies on news platforms.
Clancy’s financial success was immense. By the late 1990s, his publishing deals were worth tens of millions of dollars. He lived on an expansive Maryland estate featuring a World War II Sherman tank and later purchased a luxury penthouse in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
He was married twice, first to Wanda Thomas King, with whom he had four children, and later to journalist Alexandra Marie Llewellyn, with whom he had one daughter.
Tom Clancy passed away on October 1, 2013, at the age of 66 due to heart failure. His legacy endures through his novels, their adaptations, and the continuation of the Jack Ryan series by other writers.
While working at a small insurance agency, Clancy spent his spare time writing what would become The Hunt for Red October (1984). Published by the Naval Institute Press for an advance of $5,000, the book received an unexpected boost when President Ronald Reagan praised it as “the best yarn.” This propelled Clancy to national fame, selling millions of copies and establishing his reputation for technical accuracy in military and intelligence matters. His meticulous research and storytelling ability granted him access to high-ranking U.S. military officials, further enriching his novels.
Clancy’s works often featured heroic protagonists such as Jack Ryan and John Clark, emphasizing themes of patriotism, military expertise, and political intrigue. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, he became one of the best-selling authors in America, with titles like Red Storm Rising (1986), Patriot Games (1987), Clear and Present Danger (1989), and The Sum of All Fears (1991) dominating bestseller lists. Several of these were adapted into commercially successful films.
In addition to novels, Clancy co-authored nonfiction works on military topics and lent his name to numerous book series and video game franchises, including Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell. His influence extended beyond literature, as he became a part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team and was involved in various business ventures, including a failed attempt to purchase the Minnesota Vikings.
Politically, Clancy was a staunch conservative, often weaving his views into his books and publicly criticizing left-leaning policies. He gained further attention after the September 11 attacks, discussing intelligence failures and counterterrorism strategies on news platforms.
Clancy’s financial success was immense. By the late 1990s, his publishing deals were worth tens of millions of dollars. He lived on an expansive Maryland estate featuring a World War II Sherman tank and later purchased a luxury penthouse in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
He was married twice, first to Wanda Thomas King, with whom he had four children, and later to journalist Alexandra Marie Llewellyn, with whom he had one daughter.
Tom Clancy passed away on October 1, 2013, at the age of 66 due to heart failure. His legacy endures through his novels, their adaptations, and the continuation of the Jack Ryan series by other writers.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,992 reviews
April 4, 2015
This book is good for three reasons. One, it's not a Jack Ryan story. It tells us how John Clark came into being, who he is and what he is, and the plot actually happens roughly 15-20 years before the main series.
Two, Vietnam, so it's low tech and gritty Ramboism.
Three, Tom Clancy normally wrote Puritan Republican-voting cardboard emotions for his characters with the full knowledge that they would be portrayed in the cinema, so it must look good. But here, he went the distance with John and actually gave him something of a semblance of a real personality, and it's one of his more engaging works.
All combined, it's a very decent, classic thriller, and you will like for a bunch of reasons, especially since John is sort of an anti-hero, and there are several unique, old era elements in the book, which make for a very refreshing departure from Tom's highly dense and detailed military flavored writing.
Now, we limerick:
John met a girl with no name,
After her death, a vigilante became,
Vengeance he sought,
In Vietnam fought,
Delta Force operatives get no fame.
Cheers,
Igor
Two, Vietnam, so it's low tech and gritty Ramboism.
Three, Tom Clancy normally wrote Puritan Republican-voting cardboard emotions for his characters with the full knowledge that they would be portrayed in the cinema, so it must look good. But here, he went the distance with John and actually gave him something of a semblance of a real personality, and it's one of his more engaging works.
All combined, it's a very decent, classic thriller, and you will like for a bunch of reasons, especially since John is sort of an anti-hero, and there are several unique, old era elements in the book, which make for a very refreshing departure from Tom's highly dense and detailed military flavored writing.
Now, we limerick:
John met a girl with no name,
After her death, a vigilante became,
Vengeance he sought,
In Vietnam fought,
Delta Force operatives get no fame.
Cheers,
Igor
August 21, 2008
5.0 Stars. Absolutely superb novel focusing on the enigmatic John Clark who is one of best, if not the best, spy novel characters ever. This is one of my favorite Tom Clancy novels despite being a much "smaller" scale story. Highly Recommended!!!!
December 1, 2008
This book was...well, ok. It wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't as good as I'd hoped, given Clancy's success.
First gripe: There were FAR too many side plots, which I know where there in some attempt to round out the narrative, to show how things happen, but it just got distracting. Stupidly so at times.
Second gripe: What the hell was Clancy thinking when he started calling people by different names? Sometimes a character is referred to by his first name, sometimes by his last, sometimes by his title. Note to writers: In exposition, call characters by ONE NAME. It's irritating as hell to have a character introduced and then have to trace him back because in one pages you've got two or even three names for the same person.
Last gripe (not quite but almost a SPOILER): Kelly was pretty frickin' dumb to get caught unaware in the beginning. What an idiot. I almost stopped reading there.
I'm giving Rainbox Six a try, but I doubt I'll go past that...
First gripe: There were FAR too many side plots, which I know where there in some attempt to round out the narrative, to show how things happen, but it just got distracting. Stupidly so at times.
Second gripe: What the hell was Clancy thinking when he started calling people by different names? Sometimes a character is referred to by his first name, sometimes by his last, sometimes by his title. Note to writers: In exposition, call characters by ONE NAME. It's irritating as hell to have a character introduced and then have to trace him back because in one pages you've got two or even three names for the same person.
Last gripe (not quite but almost a SPOILER): Kelly was pretty frickin' dumb to get caught unaware in the beginning. What an idiot. I almost stopped reading there.
I'm giving Rainbox Six a try, but I doubt I'll go past that...
July 7, 2011
So bad yet so good...
Tom Clancy has long been a hit and miss author for me. I should say that a lot of it has to do with his incredibly detailed and dense descriptions of everything military. He earns a lot of kudos for his intense knowledge of his subject matter and his ability to base his fiction in frighteningly realistic circumstances, but there are times when I just want to get on with the story and not learn about a firing pin and its historical significance to military maneuvers in the east pacific along the way.
However, Without Remorse is a book so deeply drenched in character building that it swallowed me up with sympathy, empathy, and then a deep personal need to see Mr. Clark succeed in finding revenge and yes "justice" for the many wrongs that had been done to him and his. I, like many of us, had met Mr. Clark in other Clancy tales, where he was a cool and efficient military liaison to our government. But within the pages of Without Remorse, Tom Clancy brings him to life. Mr. Clark is soon revealed as a man with a history filled with flaws that maybe forgivable but are nonetheless frightening.
Back when he was called Kelly, Mr. Clark endured the loss of a wife and then another woman who was very important to him. Unfortunately for the men responsible, he wasn't prepared to accept that second loss. A man with hard-earned military skills, Kelly/Clark moves, no sweeps, through this story and leaves us with a sense of nobility as he deals with some of the most revolting segments of our society.
Is vigilante justice right? And can a man with the skills earned through U.S. military Special Forces actually beat law enforcement? The answers to those questions are sure to surprise you. But please don't assume this novel is about revenge, because it's not. It's really about how a man changes in the face of severe personal adversity, and about how even the most righteous of causes can somehow get all twisted up.
All these big issues aside, rest assured Mr. Clark is a man worth meeting and spending time with. His story isn't an easy one, but I, for one, would be pleased to learn that men like him are standing watch all around our world today.
from "Maine's Author Author"(TM) Tim Greaton
Tom Clancy has long been a hit and miss author for me. I should say that a lot of it has to do with his incredibly detailed and dense descriptions of everything military. He earns a lot of kudos for his intense knowledge of his subject matter and his ability to base his fiction in frighteningly realistic circumstances, but there are times when I just want to get on with the story and not learn about a firing pin and its historical significance to military maneuvers in the east pacific along the way.
However, Without Remorse is a book so deeply drenched in character building that it swallowed me up with sympathy, empathy, and then a deep personal need to see Mr. Clark succeed in finding revenge and yes "justice" for the many wrongs that had been done to him and his. I, like many of us, had met Mr. Clark in other Clancy tales, where he was a cool and efficient military liaison to our government. But within the pages of Without Remorse, Tom Clancy brings him to life. Mr. Clark is soon revealed as a man with a history filled with flaws that maybe forgivable but are nonetheless frightening.
Back when he was called Kelly, Mr. Clark endured the loss of a wife and then another woman who was very important to him. Unfortunately for the men responsible, he wasn't prepared to accept that second loss. A man with hard-earned military skills, Kelly/Clark moves, no sweeps, through this story and leaves us with a sense of nobility as he deals with some of the most revolting segments of our society.
Is vigilante justice right? And can a man with the skills earned through U.S. military Special Forces actually beat law enforcement? The answers to those questions are sure to surprise you. But please don't assume this novel is about revenge, because it's not. It's really about how a man changes in the face of severe personal adversity, and about how even the most righteous of causes can somehow get all twisted up.
All these big issues aside, rest assured Mr. Clark is a man worth meeting and spending time with. His story isn't an easy one, but I, for one, would be pleased to learn that men like him are standing watch all around our world today.
from "Maine's Author Author"(TM) Tim Greaton
November 4, 2018
4 stars.
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🇺🇸🤙
March 8, 2013
What a fantastic book. Having seen Hunt For Red October/Patriot Games/Sum of all Fears at the movies and finding them to be good movies I thought I'd try out the actual books. Hating to start in the middle of a series I decided if I'm going to read a Tom Clancy book I might as well start at the beginning and enjoy them all (assuming they're any good) and boy am I glad I did!
This book isn't what I expected - I thought it'ld be more action, shooting and explosions with little substance, but no there's a great deal of substance to this book and the writing style is easy to read yet very detailed and atmospheric. (There's action, shooting and explosions, but not mindlessly).
The story at a basic level is one of revenge, a man (John Kelly) who has previously lost his wife meets a young lady (Pam), it turns out Pam has been the victim of abuse, John Kelly falls in love with Pam and helping her recover and in doing so opens his heart for the first time since the death of his wife and is crushed when Pam is then murdered by her past abusers.
Enter John-the-serial-killer who seeks revenge on those who took his Pam from him. Amongst this there are a couple of other sub plots as well as the second main thrust of the story line which is John Kelly returning to Vietnam as well as being recruited by the CIA.
It really was quite the moving story and you couldn't help but sympathise with John Kelly even as he killed again and again.
This book isn't what I expected - I thought it'ld be more action, shooting and explosions with little substance, but no there's a great deal of substance to this book and the writing style is easy to read yet very detailed and atmospheric. (There's action, shooting and explosions, but not mindlessly).
The story at a basic level is one of revenge, a man (John Kelly) who has previously lost his wife meets a young lady (Pam), it turns out Pam has been the victim of abuse, John Kelly falls in love with Pam and helping her recover and in doing so opens his heart for the first time since the death of his wife and is crushed when Pam is then murdered by her past abusers.
Enter John-the-serial-killer who seeks revenge on those who took his Pam from him. Amongst this there are a couple of other sub plots as well as the second main thrust of the story line which is John Kelly returning to Vietnam as well as being recruited by the CIA.
It really was quite the moving story and you couldn't help but sympathise with John Kelly even as he killed again and again.
August 11, 2013
This is our first meeting with John Clark...if you follow Clansy's novels that tells you the back ground on this one.
This novel is quite a bit more violent than some of Clancy's other works (that's saying something I know) but that will hold true for the Clark centered novels in the series.
You get fast moving adventure with slightly less of the political twists you get when the books are about "Jack". This is an intense read.
This novel is quite a bit more violent than some of Clancy's other works (that's saying something I know) but that will hold true for the Clark centered novels in the series.
You get fast moving adventure with slightly less of the political twists you get when the books are about "Jack". This is an intense read.
April 22, 2020
Without Remorse was my first true Tom Clancy thriller and I was absolutely blown away by how excellent it is. Even reading it in 2020, it hasn’t lost its step one bit.
Without Remorse is a chilling and dark story of abuse and vengeance, packed with an intriguing and brilliant narrative as well as fast paced and realistic action. This is the origin story of John Clark, in another life. John Clark, a former Navy SEAL operative in the Vietnam war, is no stranger to pain. But there’s a limit to what a man can endure. When Clark is faced with a brutal tragedy, he takes matters into his own hands and goes on a path of violent retribution.
I found Clark to be a really interesting character from the get-go. I was amazed by how human he felt as a character. His thoughts, his emotions, all so vulnerable. This really helped to invest me further into the events of the book, and every brutal tragedy hit me twice as hard. Every single character in the book felt like a living breathing personality instead of filler characters. Tom Clancy very aptly puts readers into the heads of the characters.
The action was extremely fast paced and brutal. There is a healthy and interesting trivia of firearms and tactical equipment, which I immensely enjoyed. The mentions of creating and fitting custom suppressors particularly drew my attention. The incorporation of the realistic tactical systems helped to give Without Remorse the rightful vibe of a professional eliminating evil individuals.
Without Remorse seems like an inspiration for many thrillers nowadays and it is not hard to see why. It is a classic thriller that will stand the test of time no matter what. It doesn’t hold back punches and it’s grounded in real characters and realistic circumstances. Another brilliant aspect of the book was how multiple storylines were woven together so brilliantly, incorporating both Vietnam and US locales without overwhelming the readers. If anything, it just added to the fast pace of the thriller. It starts a bit slow, but that is worth building the foundation of the book. Tom Clancy’s influences will always stay with the thriller genre.
Without Remorse is a chilling and dark story of abuse and vengeance, packed with an intriguing and brilliant narrative as well as fast paced and realistic action. This is the origin story of John Clark, in another life. John Clark, a former Navy SEAL operative in the Vietnam war, is no stranger to pain. But there’s a limit to what a man can endure. When Clark is faced with a brutal tragedy, he takes matters into his own hands and goes on a path of violent retribution.
I found Clark to be a really interesting character from the get-go. I was amazed by how human he felt as a character. His thoughts, his emotions, all so vulnerable. This really helped to invest me further into the events of the book, and every brutal tragedy hit me twice as hard. Every single character in the book felt like a living breathing personality instead of filler characters. Tom Clancy very aptly puts readers into the heads of the characters.
The action was extremely fast paced and brutal. There is a healthy and interesting trivia of firearms and tactical equipment, which I immensely enjoyed. The mentions of creating and fitting custom suppressors particularly drew my attention. The incorporation of the realistic tactical systems helped to give Without Remorse the rightful vibe of a professional eliminating evil individuals.
Without Remorse seems like an inspiration for many thrillers nowadays and it is not hard to see why. It is a classic thriller that will stand the test of time no matter what. It doesn’t hold back punches and it’s grounded in real characters and realistic circumstances. Another brilliant aspect of the book was how multiple storylines were woven together so brilliantly, incorporating both Vietnam and US locales without overwhelming the readers. If anything, it just added to the fast pace of the thriller. It starts a bit slow, but that is worth building the foundation of the book. Tom Clancy’s influences will always stay with the thriller genre.
December 2, 2017
The beginning was slow and mildly interesting. The end is well-done and elevates the rating. 5 of 10 stars
August 25, 2008
Really good book, but the part that will stick with me forever is the torture episode that takes place on a very small unmapped military island on the Chesapeake Bay. Don't gang rape and murder someone's girlfriend if you're not able to defend yourself against her angry, psycho, highly trained military boyfriend, John Clark. Especially gruesome because the torturee was kept alive for days after being placed in a decompression chamber turned up and up and up and up, until one by one his ear drums burst, his eyes popped out, his joints explode one at a time, etc. I think his vocal cords were also destroyed so he couldn't yell for help and nobody could hear him if he could. He was slowly rendered deaf, dumb, blind, immobile, and the only sense perception he was left with was the ability to feel pain. Worth reading if only for the retaliation story and justice being served. Just these 20 or so pages rank 7 stars.
March 20, 2018
Tom Clancy was the Steven Seagal of writers
March 25, 2017
One of the worst Clancy's books I've ever read. Boring, too much description, too many unnecessary drama... Yes, I know it's about the "making" of the legendary John Clark, but I still cannot enjoy it.
June 28, 2020
John Clark was never a boy scout. Half of the book is layered Clancy geopolitical games but the rest is down and dirty. Be prepared to hit the streets with an ex Navy Seal hell bent on revenge!
But it was way too long for five stars. And there was way too much of...
Overall, I prefer John Clark to Jack Ryan.
July 1, 2022
'I have to take you in, you know.'
'What for?' .
'For murder, Mr Kelly.'
'No.' Kelly shook his head. 'It's only murder when innocent people die.'
John Clark lost his wife one year prior to the start of the story, and is still grieving her loss, when he picks up a hitchhiker named Pam who turns his world around. They fall in love fast, and almost just as fast she's taken away from him, by the very people she was running from in the first place. Now John has to hunt down those that hurt her and nothing (and no one) will stand in his way.
I love a good revenge trope, and what I love even more is an anti-hero character, like John here. I couldn't help but like him from the get-go, something about him is just so likable.
There was one scene near the start where I didn't like him for a few seconds, when he said he never thought about young sex workers, how they might not like their jobs. I was like "really John?" but then I remembered this is set in the early 70s, he's a man AND in the military at that, so what was I expecting?
He quickly remedied that though, by being embarrassed that he never thought about what life was like for them, and that made me warm up to him again.
Now the problem with this book is that the first 200 or so pages were fun, but a good chunk of the rest was a bit of a slog to get through. The ending was brilliant though, and it made me cry. So I'm settling on three stars for this, maybe if I reread it in the future the rating will change.
'What for?' .
'For murder, Mr Kelly.'
'No.' Kelly shook his head. 'It's only murder when innocent people die.'
John Clark lost his wife one year prior to the start of the story, and is still grieving her loss, when he picks up a hitchhiker named Pam who turns his world around. They fall in love fast, and almost just as fast she's taken away from him, by the very people she was running from in the first place. Now John has to hunt down those that hurt her and nothing (and no one) will stand in his way.
I love a good revenge trope, and what I love even more is an anti-hero character, like John here. I couldn't help but like him from the get-go, something about him is just so likable.
There was one scene near the start where I didn't like him for a few seconds, when he said he never thought about young sex workers, how they might not like their jobs. I was like "really John?" but then I remembered this is set in the early 70s, he's a man AND in the military at that, so what was I expecting?
He quickly remedied that though, by being embarrassed that he never thought about what life was like for them, and that made me warm up to him again.
Now the problem with this book is that the first 200 or so pages were fun, but a good chunk of the rest was a bit of a slog to get through. The ending was brilliant though, and it made me cry. So I'm settling on three stars for this, maybe if I reread it in the future the rating will change.
January 23, 2014
As I'm finishing up the book here, I decided to start writing my review. This is only my second Tom Clancy book. I read "Executive Orders" the year it came out...so a while back. I decided to start with book 1 in the Jack Ryan series (yes, he's mentioned briefly in this book).
This book focuses on the early life of John Kelly (John Clark), a legend in the Jack Ryan series. I remember his character in the movie "Clear and Present Danger", played by William Dafoe. Let me be clear. This was a good book. I gave it 2 stars, almost 3. The reason being is the book started off on such an atrocious note that I could hardly get past the first 7 chapters. It was that bad.
The story starts off with John Kelly (ex Vietnam Navy SEAL), driving to his boat when he picks up a random, yes random, chick hitchhiking on the side of the road. Not only is this girl young and fairly attractive, she's also a completely drug dependent prostitute. Within 24 hours these two are in complete love with each other and have a life planned ahead. Now, in the real world, this is nonsense. This Pam Madden girl would have robbed him blind on the first night and been right back on the street doing dope and turning tricks...that's real world folks. Quickly, Kelly finds a doctor and his wife that nurse Pam off the drugs and get her cleaned up and presentable and all looks to be hunky dory for our guy Kelly and his new love, Pam. Mind you, Kelly is also 6 months removed from his pregnant wife Tisha having been killed in an auto accident. Also killed was their unborn baby. Geeez, what luck. Almost put the book down at this point. Just not believable in the real world. Then the book got better.
After Pam is cleaned up, Kelly gets the bright idea (or not so bright, especially for a SEAL) to take Pam back to the city and scope out who the guys are that hooked her onto drugs and basically held her as a sex slave. While driving through the "hood", Pam is spotted by one of the main players on the street. This is significant because already another girl wound up dead when she tried to escape. The drug dealers can't afford to let any girl escape because they have been witnesses to various crimes, including murder. A car pursuit enues and Kelly appears to get away but he makes a fatal mistake. Pam is taken from the car and later found brutally murdered (another good grief) and Kelly (a former SEAL mind you), is shot by a low level street thug with a shotgun.
Kelly survives the assault and is treated by the same doctor, Dr. Rosen, who helped with Pam. Also a nurse named Sandy O'Toole makes her appearance (and later marries Kelly....what's with this guy and instant love?????) and also helps Kelly. Kelly at this point has nothing but revenge on his mind and gets to work, going on a mass killing spree in the city, ridding the streets of money, drugs, and drug dealers.
At the same time, the story gets a little confusing with 2-3 other sub stories going on (more like 4-5). The Vietnam War and a rescue attempt of POWS, a POW/Russian colonel relationship (not sexual mind you) in the camp, a crooked cop in with the drug dealers, a leak in the NSA (or whatever the equivalent was in the late '60s)that blows the rescue operation, ect, ect, ect. I'm not going to go into details into these parts of the story.
Clancy leaves the reader to decide on the moral conundrum that Kelly presents. Is he right to kill truly bad people??? Is it any different then war??? Is revenge ok given the end result is good?? Clancy never answers the question, although the book clearly leans to approval of the hero. The book is very brutal. Clancy pulls no punches in the descriptions of abuse for the girls involved in the drug ring. Vivid descriptions of the torture Kelly puts some of these guys through even made me nauseous, which isn't easy to do.
I liked the book. It's a classic example of revenge along the lines of "Man on Fire", "Taken", ect. I wanted to give it 3 or 4 stars and in fact the last 3/4 of the book are worthy of that...but again, the first 7 chapters almost ruined the whole story. Looking forward to Patriot Games next.
This book focuses on the early life of John Kelly (John Clark), a legend in the Jack Ryan series. I remember his character in the movie "Clear and Present Danger", played by William Dafoe. Let me be clear. This was a good book. I gave it 2 stars, almost 3. The reason being is the book started off on such an atrocious note that I could hardly get past the first 7 chapters. It was that bad.
The story starts off with John Kelly (ex Vietnam Navy SEAL), driving to his boat when he picks up a random, yes random, chick hitchhiking on the side of the road. Not only is this girl young and fairly attractive, she's also a completely drug dependent prostitute. Within 24 hours these two are in complete love with each other and have a life planned ahead. Now, in the real world, this is nonsense. This Pam Madden girl would have robbed him blind on the first night and been right back on the street doing dope and turning tricks...that's real world folks. Quickly, Kelly finds a doctor and his wife that nurse Pam off the drugs and get her cleaned up and presentable and all looks to be hunky dory for our guy Kelly and his new love, Pam. Mind you, Kelly is also 6 months removed from his pregnant wife Tisha having been killed in an auto accident. Also killed was their unborn baby. Geeez, what luck. Almost put the book down at this point. Just not believable in the real world. Then the book got better.
After Pam is cleaned up, Kelly gets the bright idea (or not so bright, especially for a SEAL) to take Pam back to the city and scope out who the guys are that hooked her onto drugs and basically held her as a sex slave. While driving through the "hood", Pam is spotted by one of the main players on the street. This is significant because already another girl wound up dead when she tried to escape. The drug dealers can't afford to let any girl escape because they have been witnesses to various crimes, including murder. A car pursuit enues and Kelly appears to get away but he makes a fatal mistake. Pam is taken from the car and later found brutally murdered (another good grief) and Kelly (a former SEAL mind you), is shot by a low level street thug with a shotgun.
Kelly survives the assault and is treated by the same doctor, Dr. Rosen, who helped with Pam. Also a nurse named Sandy O'Toole makes her appearance (and later marries Kelly....what's with this guy and instant love?????) and also helps Kelly. Kelly at this point has nothing but revenge on his mind and gets to work, going on a mass killing spree in the city, ridding the streets of money, drugs, and drug dealers.
At the same time, the story gets a little confusing with 2-3 other sub stories going on (more like 4-5). The Vietnam War and a rescue attempt of POWS, a POW/Russian colonel relationship (not sexual mind you) in the camp, a crooked cop in with the drug dealers, a leak in the NSA (or whatever the equivalent was in the late '60s)that blows the rescue operation, ect, ect, ect. I'm not going to go into details into these parts of the story.
Clancy leaves the reader to decide on the moral conundrum that Kelly presents. Is he right to kill truly bad people??? Is it any different then war??? Is revenge ok given the end result is good?? Clancy never answers the question, although the book clearly leans to approval of the hero. The book is very brutal. Clancy pulls no punches in the descriptions of abuse for the girls involved in the drug ring. Vivid descriptions of the torture Kelly puts some of these guys through even made me nauseous, which isn't easy to do.
I liked the book. It's a classic example of revenge along the lines of "Man on Fire", "Taken", ect. I wanted to give it 3 or 4 stars and in fact the last 3/4 of the book are worthy of that...but again, the first 7 chapters almost ruined the whole story. Looking forward to Patriot Games next.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 24, 2025
I usually just remove books from my currently reading when I DNF them, but this one deserves its own shelf. Here are some lowlights:
I've read this multiple times and still have no clue what any part of it means
He has known Pam for 24 hours btw
What the fuck? This was my first time reading Tom Clancy and based on his reputation I figured I'd be getting a half decent, if not pedestrian spy thriller. But this reads more like a YA novel about a supposedly grown man and war hero who somehow can't grasp the concept of drug addiction and/or sexual abuse, who falls in love with a 21 year old prostitute a day after meeting her, a mere 6 months after his pregnant wife is crushed by a runaway semi truck. But wait there's more:
This is the protagonist???
“You have to leave so early?”
Sarah nodded. “We really should have left last night, but what the hell.” She looked at Kelly. “If you don’t show up like I said, I’ll call you and scream.”
“Sarah. Jesus, you’re a pushy broad!”
“You should hear what Sam says.”
I've read this multiple times and still have no clue what any part of it means
“I’ll take my chances. I think I know the important parts already. I love you, Pam.”
He has known Pam for 24 hours btw
“She’s been abused, John. I didn’t ask about it—one thing at a time—but somebody’s given her a rough time.”
“Oh?” Kelly looked up from the sofa. “What do you mean?”
“I mean she’s been sexually assaulted,” Sarah said in a calm, professional voice that belied her personal feelings.
“You mean raped?” Kelly asked in a low voice while the muscles of his arms tensed.
What the fuck? This was my first time reading Tom Clancy and based on his reputation I figured I'd be getting a half decent, if not pedestrian spy thriller. But this reads more like a YA novel about a supposedly grown man and war hero who somehow can't grasp the concept of drug addiction and/or sexual abuse, who falls in love with a 21 year old prostitute a day after meeting her, a mere 6 months after his pregnant wife is crushed by a runaway semi truck. But wait there's more:
The girls he’d had in Vietnam, the little childlike ones, and the few he’d taken since Tish’s death. It had never occurred to him that those young women might not have enjoyed their life and work. He’d never even thought about it, accepting their feigned reactions as genuine human feelings—for wasn’t he a decent, honorable man?
This is the protagonist???
October 13, 2016
Another 'prequel' in the series (there were to be even more). This one went way back to tell us where John Clark comes from. Long and not so engaging. And John Clarke is not a sympathetic character. Did not care much for this one, but of course worse were to come...
August 26, 2013
All I need to say Is John Kelly is a BAD ASS! This was my first Tom Clancy book and won't be the last, I read this book because my friends have talked about how great of a writer Tom Clancy is. So I took a look at some of his books. And to be honest at first I did judge his books by their covers, because there was always some sort of gun or weapon on the cover. So I figured he would be the Michael Bay of literature, all explosions, a weak plot, and characters without any depth. But I was pleasantly surprised! Although the book may have been slow at points it was a great book. I did feel like some of the parts like Colonel Zacharias were rushed in the end. But overall this book was exciting and unpredictable! I strongly recommend this book.
February 27, 2017
Started with audio and then found that I could not tell when scene and character changed. I pulled a hard copy off the to-read shelf and had a great experience. I remember the time frame of the story and understand the military, the drug situation as presented.
I recommend this to people on both ends of political spectrum....Nixon is president after the LBJ admins. complete cockup in South East Asia totally destroyed the political power of centrists and conservative Democrats.
I recommend this to people on both ends of political spectrum....Nixon is president after the LBJ admins. complete cockup in South East Asia totally destroyed the political power of centrists and conservative Democrats.
September 19, 2016
Ce livre est a recommandé au fan d'Octobre Rouge et du Cardinal du Kremlin , il présente la vie d'un second rôle John Clark , ex SEAL devenu tueur pour la CIA ...il n'y a pas de concessions , c 'est violent , mais justifié.
5/5
5/5
February 16, 2020
Without Merit
August 21, 2025
This is a 5/5 thriller. Clancy was hugely popular in the 80s and 90s, and though he has since passed on, his name is still one that kids and boomers alike are all familiar with. Nowadays, he is most well known for the games that have his name on them, like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. When I was a kid, these were books that people my father and grandfather’s age would read.
But make no mistake—in his prime, Tom Clancy was an absolute master of what he did. He may not have been the greatest writer in the sense that his prose is very…utilitarian. But man, his stories are just so good. His detail on military stuff remains unmatched, to the point where I’ve heard various conspiracies about him possibly being some sort of agent. His books often consist of multiple seemingly unconnected storylines that always come together in an absolutely heart pounding and explosive finale. He’s one of the best writers of endings in the genre; I have no doubt he was the kind of writer that outlined and mapped his books out beforehand, and then went in and filled out the story. Whatever he did, it worked so freaking well.
This book is something of an oddball in his catalogue. It’s a more straightforward story that doesn’t change POVs much. It doesn’t contain the major military detail that he’s known for. It’s a straight, ass-kicking revenge story, and slowly builds into a balls to the wall thriller that’s as good as anything else in the genre. This is the story of Mr. Clark—a character who was well involved in the series before this book came out, but was always a sort of mysterious badass. Clancy goes back to the Vietnam war era and gives us the whole story of how John Kelly became Clark, and I don’t think he could’ve done it better if he wanted to.
Is this the best thriller novel of all time? The answer very well could be a yes. It should at least be in the conversation every time. It’s entertaining, thrilling, and exhilarating. Clancy knocked it out of the park and while I rarely give thriller novels a full boat, the only way to go here is 5/5 stars.
For the record, this book takes place in the Jack Ryan universe, but doesn’t have Jack in it as it takes place well before the events of Patriot Games and Hunt for Red October. It can absolutely be read as a standalone without having read the rest of the series, and it honestly wouldn’t be a bad place to start, but I do want to note that this book is made even more powerful when you already kind of know Clark. Clancy waited as long as he did to tell Clark’s story for a reason, and it hits that much harder. I maintain the best way to read Tom Clancy’s novels is in order of publication starting with The Hunt for Red October—most of the Ryan novels are not standalones, and to really get what’s going on in a book like Executive Orders, you had to have read Debt of Honor. The exceptions are this one, Red Storm Rising, and arguably Rainbow Six.
Wherever you decide to start with Mr. Clancy, I truly recommend not writing him off as an author your dad liked. His books were as huge as they were for a reason.
But make no mistake—in his prime, Tom Clancy was an absolute master of what he did. He may not have been the greatest writer in the sense that his prose is very…utilitarian. But man, his stories are just so good. His detail on military stuff remains unmatched, to the point where I’ve heard various conspiracies about him possibly being some sort of agent. His books often consist of multiple seemingly unconnected storylines that always come together in an absolutely heart pounding and explosive finale. He’s one of the best writers of endings in the genre; I have no doubt he was the kind of writer that outlined and mapped his books out beforehand, and then went in and filled out the story. Whatever he did, it worked so freaking well.
This book is something of an oddball in his catalogue. It’s a more straightforward story that doesn’t change POVs much. It doesn’t contain the major military detail that he’s known for. It’s a straight, ass-kicking revenge story, and slowly builds into a balls to the wall thriller that’s as good as anything else in the genre. This is the story of Mr. Clark—a character who was well involved in the series before this book came out, but was always a sort of mysterious badass. Clancy goes back to the Vietnam war era and gives us the whole story of how John Kelly became Clark, and I don’t think he could’ve done it better if he wanted to.
Is this the best thriller novel of all time? The answer very well could be a yes. It should at least be in the conversation every time. It’s entertaining, thrilling, and exhilarating. Clancy knocked it out of the park and while I rarely give thriller novels a full boat, the only way to go here is 5/5 stars.
For the record, this book takes place in the Jack Ryan universe, but doesn’t have Jack in it as it takes place well before the events of Patriot Games and Hunt for Red October. It can absolutely be read as a standalone without having read the rest of the series, and it honestly wouldn’t be a bad place to start, but I do want to note that this book is made even more powerful when you already kind of know Clark. Clancy waited as long as he did to tell Clark’s story for a reason, and it hits that much harder. I maintain the best way to read Tom Clancy’s novels is in order of publication starting with The Hunt for Red October—most of the Ryan novels are not standalones, and to really get what’s going on in a book like Executive Orders, you had to have read Debt of Honor. The exceptions are this one, Red Storm Rising, and arguably Rainbow Six.
Wherever you decide to start with Mr. Clancy, I truly recommend not writing him off as an author your dad liked. His books were as huge as they were for a reason.
April 27, 2019
عالی بود! عالی. واقعا نمیتونم ایرادی بهش بگیرم. همه جنبه های یک کتاب خوب رو داشت. هم اکشن، هم هیجان، هم اطلاعات دقیق، هم روابط انسانی و احساسی عالی، هم معما گونهای ، تا حدی هم پلیسی.
April 3, 2013
Kelly is a Navy Seal back in the states as Vietnam rages half way across the globe. He's done his service, and well, and is now working as an underwater demolitions expert.
Of course, that all changes when his pregnant wife is accidentally killed. Several months pass. Then on a wimhe picks up a female hitch hiker while he is on the way to his boat. (he lives on an island somewhere off the coast of MD that used to be a military site).
The hitch hiker has a horrendous past, she's running from some very bad people, and is addicted to drugs. That is where the book really takes off.
***Spoiler Alert***
The good...
-Kelly is a very likable character. He's tough, but the very same things that make him so resiliant also show his humanity.
-The love story between Kelly and Pam is very sweet. There is something touching about the two of them finding each other.
The bad...
-Pam dies. That sucked. I like happy endings.
-The way that Pam dies. The retelling of that tale is just to brutal. I actually debated about giving the book a lower rating because I found it disturbing. But then I argued with myself that if it was giving my nightmares, I guess it was effective.
-The cross story about the POW's and how they were off the books was interesting, but I think it could have been done quicker. It was a lot of subplot for what I felt was little return. Kelly needed the out at the end, but I don't think the story needed that much detail to make it happen.
-In the end, Henry got it too quick. He should have been the one in the high pressure chamber.
A very good read, and the overall happy ending with Nurse O'Toole in the end was a nice touch. I liked that Kelly was at peace by the last page. And while Jack Ryan is just barely in this book, it is considered the first in the series. Looking forward to reading the next one, although I think Kelly becomes a side character from here on in.
Of course, that all changes when his pregnant wife is accidentally killed. Several months pass. Then on a wimhe picks up a female hitch hiker while he is on the way to his boat. (he lives on an island somewhere off the coast of MD that used to be a military site).
The hitch hiker has a horrendous past, she's running from some very bad people, and is addicted to drugs. That is where the book really takes off.
***Spoiler Alert***
The good...
-Kelly is a very likable character. He's tough, but the very same things that make him so resiliant also show his humanity.
-The love story between Kelly and Pam is very sweet. There is something touching about the two of them finding each other.
The bad...
-Pam dies. That sucked. I like happy endings.
-The way that Pam dies. The retelling of that tale is just to brutal. I actually debated about giving the book a lower rating because I found it disturbing. But then I argued with myself that if it was giving my nightmares, I guess it was effective.
-The cross story about the POW's and how they were off the books was interesting, but I think it could have been done quicker. It was a lot of subplot for what I felt was little return. Kelly needed the out at the end, but I don't think the story needed that much detail to make it happen.
-In the end, Henry got it too quick. He should have been the one in the high pressure chamber.
A very good read, and the overall happy ending with Nurse O'Toole in the end was a nice touch. I liked that Kelly was at peace by the last page. And while Jack Ryan is just barely in this book, it is considered the first in the series. Looking forward to reading the next one, although I think Kelly becomes a side character from here on in.
September 27, 2023
Primo libro di Clancy che leggo, ispirato dalla serie di Jack Ryan su Prime.
Che dire? Un librone bello grosso che però scorre via piacevolmente, un po' lento nell'inizio e un po' troppo rapido e forse forzato nel finale. Abbiamo l'America al tempo del Vietnam, la CIA e i Marines, i "nuovi" Seal e i piloti, la vecchia generazione di soldati ormai prossima alla pensione e i nuovi in rampa di lancio.
E abbiamo una città con un lato oscuro, abbiamo poliziotti corrotti e spacciatori ambiziosi, giovani donne sfruttate e dottori coraggiosi, abbiamo violenze e droga.
In mezzo a tutto questo abbiamo John Kelly, ex Seal ora addestratore di sommozzatori ed esperto di esplosivi per abbattere costruzioni ormai inutili in mare.
Cosa può succedere quando un commando cui è già morta la moglie per un incidente, trova una nuova ragione di vita in una ragazza dalla vita spezzata che riesce a salvarsi e a salvarlo, solo per venire barbaramente uccisa da dei delinquenti?
Esatto, fuoco e sangue.
La mole del tomo però è dovuta al fatto che la storia di Kelly e gli spacciatori (la trama dell'Uomo Invisibile, che ci regala uno scorcio su un giovane Jack Ryan) si interseca con la storia del campo di prigionia segreto in Vietnam (la trama di John Clark, con marines e marescialli e spie, con soldati, Vietcong e russi).
A un certo punto viene da chiedersi come riescano a convivere le due trame, come possano arrivare entrambe a conclusione, e forse in effetti la carne al fuoco è pure troppa, comportando una risoluzione abbastanza veloce se paragonata al tempo speso per costruire la storia fino a lì.
Mi è comunque piaciuto, ho apprezzato i personaggi così come l'atmosfera del libro.
Un peccato che l'edizione BUR sia piena di refusi.
Addirittura in un paragrafo un personaggio (Morello) cambia nome due volte diventando Morella e Moretto.
Imbarazzante, davvero.
Che dire? Un librone bello grosso che però scorre via piacevolmente, un po' lento nell'inizio e un po' troppo rapido e forse forzato nel finale. Abbiamo l'America al tempo del Vietnam, la CIA e i Marines, i "nuovi" Seal e i piloti, la vecchia generazione di soldati ormai prossima alla pensione e i nuovi in rampa di lancio.
E abbiamo una città con un lato oscuro, abbiamo poliziotti corrotti e spacciatori ambiziosi, giovani donne sfruttate e dottori coraggiosi, abbiamo violenze e droga.
In mezzo a tutto questo abbiamo John Kelly, ex Seal ora addestratore di sommozzatori ed esperto di esplosivi per abbattere costruzioni ormai inutili in mare.
Cosa può succedere quando un commando cui è già morta la moglie per un incidente, trova una nuova ragione di vita in una ragazza dalla vita spezzata che riesce a salvarsi e a salvarlo, solo per venire barbaramente uccisa da dei delinquenti?
Esatto, fuoco e sangue.
La mole del tomo però è dovuta al fatto che la storia di Kelly e gli spacciatori (la trama dell'Uomo Invisibile, che ci regala uno scorcio su un giovane Jack Ryan) si interseca con la storia del campo di prigionia segreto in Vietnam (la trama di John Clark, con marines e marescialli e spie, con soldati, Vietcong e russi).
A un certo punto viene da chiedersi come riescano a convivere le due trame, come possano arrivare entrambe a conclusione, e forse in effetti la carne al fuoco è pure troppa, comportando una risoluzione abbastanza veloce se paragonata al tempo speso per costruire la storia fino a lì.
Mi è comunque piaciuto, ho apprezzato i personaggi così come l'atmosfera del libro.
Un peccato che l'edizione BUR sia piena di refusi.
Addirittura in un paragrafo un personaggio (Morello) cambia nome due volte diventando Morella e Moretto.
Imbarazzante, davvero.
October 22, 2017
Executive Summary: I found this book good at times, and tedious at others. It rounded out to be a so-so thriller overall.
Audiobook: Much like the other Clancy books he's narrated, Michael Prichard does a fine job, but nothing spectacular. He speaks clearly and with good volume. He doesn't add anything extra to the story nor does he detract from it. Audio is a decent option here.
Full Review
This book is largely split into two parts: Military/CIA thriller, and domestic vigilante action crime drama. I much preferred the former to the latter.
The beginning of this book was a drag. I guess it was meant to give you sympathy to John Clark's one-man crusade, but I mostly just found it soured me on the whole subplot. I guess it's important to explaining how John Kelly became John Clark, but if anything it made me less interested in his origin story.
The parts of this book I enjoyed most were the parts where John was acting as John Clark. The planning and execution of a dangerous and daring mission where his expertise is the make or break point for success or failure. That was what I picked this book up for.
Part of my issue may be the timing. I had just finished another Tom Clancy book not that long ago, and probably wasn't ready for a second so soon, but my hold came in from the library so I decided to go ahead anyways.
At this point, I'll be taking a break from Clancy for awhile. We'll see if I'm the mood again in a few months.
Audiobook: Much like the other Clancy books he's narrated, Michael Prichard does a fine job, but nothing spectacular. He speaks clearly and with good volume. He doesn't add anything extra to the story nor does he detract from it. Audio is a decent option here.
Full Review
This book is largely split into two parts: Military/CIA thriller, and domestic vigilante action crime drama. I much preferred the former to the latter.
The beginning of this book was a drag. I guess it was meant to give you sympathy to John Clark's one-man crusade, but I mostly just found it soured me on the whole subplot. I guess it's important to explaining how John Kelly became John Clark, but if anything it made me less interested in his origin story.
The parts of this book I enjoyed most were the parts where John was acting as John Clark. The planning and execution of a dangerous and daring mission where his expertise is the make or break point for success or failure. That was what I picked this book up for.
Part of my issue may be the timing. I had just finished another Tom Clancy book not that long ago, and probably wasn't ready for a second so soon, but my hold came in from the library so I decided to go ahead anyways.
At this point, I'll be taking a break from Clancy for awhile. We'll see if I'm the mood again in a few months.
October 19, 2012
I read this back when it was first published. As a Clancy fan I was up to date until Rainbow Six,then the novels started going off in all directions with collaborations and I lost track and although I've bought more of Tom's books I can't stand reading a series out of order. But if you're a fan and you know where I'm up to you'll understand when I say nigh twenty years after reading it is the most memorable of all his novels. For its unswerving violence in the name of revenge. I'd recommend this book in a heart beat. It's as good a stand alone book as Tom ever produced.
May 21, 2025
Without Remorse, the seventh work of fiction by genre grandmaster and arguably greatest of the encyclopedic postmodernist novel's Great White Auteurs, Tom Clancy, has its strengths.
Plotting. There you go. Late period Clancy plots are impressive mechanisms. Without Remorse arguably heralds the beginning of Clancy's final and most advanced stylistic evolution. Threading the tightrope between realism and elaborate thriller setpieces, this thing builds and builds until it explodes. Violent climaxes cascade. Small 'i' incidents rube goldberg into capital 'E' Events (while reading, I enjoyed how stupid mistakes drove the plot more than the usual Clancy Signature™ butterfly-effect-coincidence).
And, you might be thinking, what about its weaknesses?
Oh God. Everything else!
The politics are bad, of course. To be expected.
Originally developed in the early 70's, before its publication in 1993, Clancy intended this to be a rebuke of Rambo. A double barreled rejection of both David Morrell's post-Vietnam moral ambivalence and of the US government's lack of support for military veterans. Influenced as much by Brian Garfield as by Don Pendelton, but built to carry the thematic weight of ideas.
Adapted 30 years later into a brain dead but extremely atmospheric Michael B Jordan movie.
And yet, spoilers I guess, somehow dumber on page than on screen.
Without Remorse the book has problems. It's a 1990s airport thriller about Revenge™. You expect what you expect. But worse than every other shitty part of this doorstop...
worse than the racism,
or the schematic violence,
or the overlong genre-standard mid novel gore-porn torture sequence,
or the stuffy, moralizing narration,
or the prose doggedly committed to splitting the difference between over-written and flat beige,
or the laughably out-of-touch social insights,
worse even than the aggressively anti-erotic sex scenes or the obsessive descriptions of barely legal prostitutes with gaps between their front teeth
is the characterization.
Truly bizarre sometimes! When Clancy imagined the world in which to stage his art, one wonders if he imagined humans in it.
I'll give one example:
When we meet our 30-something year old protagonist his wife has just died in a horrible accident. Before our introduction to him is over he has:
picked up a runaway teenage sex worker,
fucked her on his boat,
cried after sex,
fallen in love with her,
discovered that she has a (minor and currently managed) drug habit,
flown into a rage over it,
forced her to clean up cold turkey,
pampered and groomed her (literally and in the creepiest sense of the word),
and gotten her killed – raped to death (the book describes this in detail) – through his stupidity.
He is the hero.
All this takes about three incident-packed weeks.
The entire time this has been going on the book has been assuring us that:
this is personal growth on his part,
he's the smartest, most capable, manliest man in every room he's ever been in,
and everything he does is cool and normal.
His primary flaw is naivete, you understand: despite being an expert hunter-killer cold-blooded assassin operator type he too often sees the best in people and doesn't often enough resort to violence.
By the end of the book – six months later, tops – this will have changed. Our hero will have tortured a dude to death and then staged his own suicide in order to become a CIA wetworks guy. He'll also have a new wife.
That's right, the teenager he fucks and then spends the book avenging isn't even his primary romantic conquest.
He is the hero!
I don't know if I have adequately conveyed how ludicrous this all plays on the page. It's absolutely wild. Every character is like this, too, to one degree or another. An entire book of psychologies orthogonal to normality!
I need to pause. Deep breath. I'm realizing I may have made this book sound interesting. Or entertaining: characters so poorly written they become ironically enjoyable. You might be thinking: I need to read this now. You might be thinking this sounds charmingly like pulp-novel escalation. 80s BBQ dad soap opera camp.
If you have so far come away with this impression, then listen to me. Please. I cannot stress this enough: you are absolutely correct.
This book is both incredibly interesting and also hilariously entertaining. Just not in the way the author intended.
Clancy wrote this book to be deadly serious. This is Tom's idea of a fallen hero finding redemption. The Punisher become an agent of the state. Mack Bolan for Intellectuals. The mirror image to Jack Ryan, his rigidly moral WASP-cum-Catholic regular main character.
Which means in addition to being a ludicrous banger of a ride, Without Remorse is a truly gross book. Like, disgusting. Offensive. Not just in terms of content. Tonally and technically too. Awkwardly constructed on every level, constantly in tension with both itself and its context. An object built for ironic appreciation only.
To take this thing on face value is to be repulsed.
Written for and by a specific kind of ultra-nationalist, misogynistic, fragile, middle-aged and church-going – but still horny – white guy, this book reads like a window into the mind of the type of suburban boomer who would eventually grow up to be a MAGA chud.
I'm not gonna pretend like I didn't have a ton of fun, but I'm what you could call an enthusiast. The entertainment value is there, for sure. You're just gonna have to work for it. You'll have to accept the world the work comes with. You gotta embrace the ridiculousness of history.
Because Without Remorse is – perhaps more than any other Clancy political thriller, including Red October – like a primer for it's genre. A fascinating artifact. A prototype weapon. To approach this thing with the detachment of analysis is to be enthralled. This is the template from which they built one of the most politically influent genres in the modern era. To read this is to understand not a counter-culture but rather a sort of vaguely risible but historically undeniable American shadow culture.
The suburban boomer's imaginations manifested as decisions. Trace the influence of this novel: see the path of a sociopolitical movement.
Media is mentality. The roots of Scott Harvath and Mitch Rapp are here. Fox News analysts dream like this book. Jack Bauer is here – the television avatar of the Global War on Terror who advised President Bush from the silver screen. This is the reason every shitty series character by a retired SEAL goes rogue and then gets hired by some alphabet agency. John Ringo wrote a parody of this thing. Jack Carr's career is an homage. There is a church in Texas where ex-operators in Multicam fast rope down with empty plate carriers and Airsoft MP5s to demonstrate to a rapt audience the intersection of slick violence art and the armor of God. Even the other side exists in reaction: Tom Clancy dropped a ripoff cum critique of The Punisher so influential that the Netflix TV Punisher – a Disney/Marvel flagship IP – looped back around into a ripoff of Tom Clancy.
The greatest strength of Without Remorse is its existence. We live in its shadow. It's weaknesses?
Oh God. Everything else!
This is the conservative thriller Rosetta Stone and, appropriately, it's barely readable.
Plotting. There you go. Late period Clancy plots are impressive mechanisms. Without Remorse arguably heralds the beginning of Clancy's final and most advanced stylistic evolution. Threading the tightrope between realism and elaborate thriller setpieces, this thing builds and builds until it explodes. Violent climaxes cascade. Small 'i' incidents rube goldberg into capital 'E' Events (while reading, I enjoyed how stupid mistakes drove the plot more than the usual Clancy Signature™ butterfly-effect-coincidence).
And, you might be thinking, what about its weaknesses?
Oh God. Everything else!
The politics are bad, of course. To be expected.
Originally developed in the early 70's, before its publication in 1993, Clancy intended this to be a rebuke of Rambo. A double barreled rejection of both David Morrell's post-Vietnam moral ambivalence and of the US government's lack of support for military veterans. Influenced as much by Brian Garfield as by Don Pendelton, but built to carry the thematic weight of ideas.
Adapted 30 years later into a brain dead but extremely atmospheric Michael B Jordan movie.
And yet, spoilers I guess, somehow dumber on page than on screen.
Without Remorse the book has problems. It's a 1990s airport thriller about Revenge™. You expect what you expect. But worse than every other shitty part of this doorstop...
worse than the racism,
or the schematic violence,
or the overlong genre-standard mid novel gore-porn torture sequence,
or the stuffy, moralizing narration,
or the prose doggedly committed to splitting the difference between over-written and flat beige,
or the laughably out-of-touch social insights,
worse even than the aggressively anti-erotic sex scenes or the obsessive descriptions of barely legal prostitutes with gaps between their front teeth
is the characterization.
Truly bizarre sometimes! When Clancy imagined the world in which to stage his art, one wonders if he imagined humans in it.
I'll give one example:
When we meet our 30-something year old protagonist his wife has just died in a horrible accident. Before our introduction to him is over he has:
picked up a runaway teenage sex worker,
fucked her on his boat,
cried after sex,
fallen in love with her,
discovered that she has a (minor and currently managed) drug habit,
flown into a rage over it,
forced her to clean up cold turkey,
pampered and groomed her (literally and in the creepiest sense of the word),
and gotten her killed – raped to death (the book describes this in detail) – through his stupidity.
He is the hero.
All this takes about three incident-packed weeks.
The entire time this has been going on the book has been assuring us that:
this is personal growth on his part,
he's the smartest, most capable, manliest man in every room he's ever been in,
and everything he does is cool and normal.
His primary flaw is naivete, you understand: despite being an expert hunter-killer cold-blooded assassin operator type he too often sees the best in people and doesn't often enough resort to violence.
By the end of the book – six months later, tops – this will have changed. Our hero will have tortured a dude to death and then staged his own suicide in order to become a CIA wetworks guy. He'll also have a new wife.
That's right, the teenager he fucks and then spends the book avenging isn't even his primary romantic conquest.
He is the hero!
I don't know if I have adequately conveyed how ludicrous this all plays on the page. It's absolutely wild. Every character is like this, too, to one degree or another. An entire book of psychologies orthogonal to normality!
I need to pause. Deep breath. I'm realizing I may have made this book sound interesting. Or entertaining: characters so poorly written they become ironically enjoyable. You might be thinking: I need to read this now. You might be thinking this sounds charmingly like pulp-novel escalation. 80s BBQ dad soap opera camp.
If you have so far come away with this impression, then listen to me. Please. I cannot stress this enough: you are absolutely correct.
This book is both incredibly interesting and also hilariously entertaining. Just not in the way the author intended.
Clancy wrote this book to be deadly serious. This is Tom's idea of a fallen hero finding redemption. The Punisher become an agent of the state. Mack Bolan for Intellectuals. The mirror image to Jack Ryan, his rigidly moral WASP-cum-Catholic regular main character.
Which means in addition to being a ludicrous banger of a ride, Without Remorse is a truly gross book. Like, disgusting. Offensive. Not just in terms of content. Tonally and technically too. Awkwardly constructed on every level, constantly in tension with both itself and its context. An object built for ironic appreciation only.
To take this thing on face value is to be repulsed.
Written for and by a specific kind of ultra-nationalist, misogynistic, fragile, middle-aged and church-going – but still horny – white guy, this book reads like a window into the mind of the type of suburban boomer who would eventually grow up to be a MAGA chud.
I'm not gonna pretend like I didn't have a ton of fun, but I'm what you could call an enthusiast. The entertainment value is there, for sure. You're just gonna have to work for it. You'll have to accept the world the work comes with. You gotta embrace the ridiculousness of history.
Because Without Remorse is – perhaps more than any other Clancy political thriller, including Red October – like a primer for it's genre. A fascinating artifact. A prototype weapon. To approach this thing with the detachment of analysis is to be enthralled. This is the template from which they built one of the most politically influent genres in the modern era. To read this is to understand not a counter-culture but rather a sort of vaguely risible but historically undeniable American shadow culture.
The suburban boomer's imaginations manifested as decisions. Trace the influence of this novel: see the path of a sociopolitical movement.
Media is mentality. The roots of Scott Harvath and Mitch Rapp are here. Fox News analysts dream like this book. Jack Bauer is here – the television avatar of the Global War on Terror who advised President Bush from the silver screen. This is the reason every shitty series character by a retired SEAL goes rogue and then gets hired by some alphabet agency. John Ringo wrote a parody of this thing. Jack Carr's career is an homage. There is a church in Texas where ex-operators in Multicam fast rope down with empty plate carriers and Airsoft MP5s to demonstrate to a rapt audience the intersection of slick violence art and the armor of God. Even the other side exists in reaction: Tom Clancy dropped a ripoff cum critique of The Punisher so influential that the Netflix TV Punisher – a Disney/Marvel flagship IP – looped back around into a ripoff of Tom Clancy.
The greatest strength of Without Remorse is its existence. We live in its shadow. It's weaknesses?
Oh God. Everything else!
This is the conservative thriller Rosetta Stone and, appropriately, it's barely readable.
dnf
March 18, 2025It’s funny how you can read the first page of a book and realize you are “not” the right audience for this one. In my attempt to build a home library I picked up any book I could find. Any author seemed like they should be given a chance. I’m not saying Tom Clancy is a bad author. I’m just saying his writing is not for me at this point. I have read one of his books that I completed. It was aight. But for now he is on hold. We will see what the future holds.
July 8, 2021
I hadn't read a Tom Clancy novel actually written by him (and not another author under his brand) since probably I was in college. I really liked them back then, but my tastes have changed and expanded somewhat so I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy Without Remorse even though it's been on my radar to read for 20 years. I recently just watched the Amazon Prime adaptation with Michael B. Jordan and honestly it sucked so I assumed the book had to be better. It was time to give it a go.
The bare bones here is that this is a revenge tale and origin story for one of Clancy's most beloved characters (and my personal favorite) John Clark. The story starts with former Navy SEAL, John Kelly, doing some maritime demolition and salvage work when his young pregnant wife is killed in a car accident. This threw me for a bit of a loop because I assumed the revenge tale would be about her murder. You find out so early on that it is not it can't really be considered a spoiler. The story starts in earnest when Kelly falls quickly in love with a woman named Pam who has problems and is clearly running away from something. This eventually leads Kelly down a very dark path seeking justice outside the law.
Of course there is a lot more too it than that which I omitted due to spoilers, but honestly the biggest flaw of this book is how much Clancy should have omitted as well. The revenge arc here is quite solid even if some things about it feel a bit weird. Kelly and Pam's relationship feels a lot like instalove. Clancy isn't a strong enough writer of relationships to make this work and base a whole revenge plot around it. That being said it's still a really fun revenge plot that carries the book. The real problem is that Clancy introduces 2 or 3 other side plots that make the book really jump around from pov to pov and location to location sometimes within the same chapter. It just makes it feel very uneven. What could have been a really focused 350 page revenge thriller turns into a 750 page revenge thriller with drug smuggling, crime investigation, Vietnam POWs and a rescue operation, and Cold War espionage.
That being said I still mostly enjoyed reading about all of those plots even though it did feel a bit jumbled. Ultimately what really shined here though is really building Mr. Clark's backstory. I've read many novels in the Ryanverse where he played a significant role, and it was fun to see how he became what he is. Also, I'm always going to have a good time when a story has someone going John Wick all over the dregs of humanity. Clancy was doing John Wick 20 years before John Wick was a thing.
All in all I really enjoyed this book. This is a book you read for the action and plot. The prose and characters are nothing to write home about. They are clinical, technical, and ultimately serviceable to tell the intended story. If you are a Clancy fan, but have been skipping this one and sticking to the Jack Ryan novels (he does not make an appearance here) I would recommend you pick this one up.
The bare bones here is that this is a revenge tale and origin story for one of Clancy's most beloved characters (and my personal favorite) John Clark. The story starts with former Navy SEAL, John Kelly, doing some maritime demolition and salvage work when his young pregnant wife is killed in a car accident. This threw me for a bit of a loop because I assumed the revenge tale would be about her murder. You find out so early on that it is not it can't really be considered a spoiler. The story starts in earnest when Kelly falls quickly in love with a woman named Pam who has problems and is clearly running away from something. This eventually leads Kelly down a very dark path seeking justice outside the law.
Of course there is a lot more too it than that which I omitted due to spoilers, but honestly the biggest flaw of this book is how much Clancy should have omitted as well. The revenge arc here is quite solid even if some things about it feel a bit weird. Kelly and Pam's relationship feels a lot like instalove. Clancy isn't a strong enough writer of relationships to make this work and base a whole revenge plot around it. That being said it's still a really fun revenge plot that carries the book. The real problem is that Clancy introduces 2 or 3 other side plots that make the book really jump around from pov to pov and location to location sometimes within the same chapter. It just makes it feel very uneven. What could have been a really focused 350 page revenge thriller turns into a 750 page revenge thriller with drug smuggling, crime investigation, Vietnam POWs and a rescue operation, and Cold War espionage.
That being said I still mostly enjoyed reading about all of those plots even though it did feel a bit jumbled. Ultimately what really shined here though is really building Mr. Clark's backstory. I've read many novels in the Ryanverse where he played a significant role, and it was fun to see how he became what he is. Also, I'm always going to have a good time when a story has someone going John Wick all over the dregs of humanity. Clancy was doing John Wick 20 years before John Wick was a thing.
All in all I really enjoyed this book. This is a book you read for the action and plot. The prose and characters are nothing to write home about. They are clinical, technical, and ultimately serviceable to tell the intended story. If you are a Clancy fan, but have been skipping this one and sticking to the Jack Ryan novels (he does not make an appearance here) I would recommend you pick this one up.
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