This book was another Christmas present – though one I picked out myself. I think it was 1993, though it may have been a year earlier. I was out Christmas shopping with my parents. Since they weren’t quite sure which book to get me this time, we simply went into a bookshop, and this is the one we came out with. Not being allowed to read it for several more days was sheer torture.
Alongside The Hunt for Red October, I consider this Clancy’s best book. After that, his books went downhill, and the pro-American slant got much worse. The next two were still fairly decent, but then I gave up. As far as I’m concerned, the Ryanverse had run its course by Executive Orders at the very latest.
This book, though, is simply brilliantly written and gripping. Plot threads are set up long in advance (the log turns out to be pretty important, even if at first you’re left thinking, “Huh?”). Chekhov’s gun applies to books, too – even when, as here, there’s a long stretch between showing the gun and pulling the trigger.
I no longer have my copy from back then – it’s one of the few books I’ve ever lost. It drowned when a pipe burst in the cellar of my flat in Oldenburg, and sadly it couldn’t be saved.
PS: I hold two things against the film adaptation, just a little: its rather generic German title, Der Anschlag (“The Attack”), and Ben Affleck.