Locked On

Tom Clancy · Mark Greaney

Dec 2011 · A Jack Ryan Novel Book 11 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

Jack Ryan Jr.—along with the covert warriors of the Campus—continues to uphold his legendary father’s legacy of courage and honor in this thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Clancy.

Privately training with special forces, he’s honing his combat skills to continue his work within the Campus, hunting down and eliminating terrorists wherever he can—even as Jack Ryan Sr. campaigns to become President of the United States again.
 
But what neither father nor son knows is that the political and personal have just become equally dangerous. A devout enemy of Jack Sr. launches a privately-funded vendetta to discredit him and connect him to a mysterious killing in his longtime ally John Clark’s past. All they have to do is catch him.
 
With Clark on the run, it’s up to Jack Jr. to stop a growing threat emerging in the Middle East, where a corrupt Pakistani general has entered into a deadly pact with a fanatical terrorist to procure four nuclear warheads they can use to blackmail any world power into submission—or face annihilation.

Ratings and reviews

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I was disturbed by the amount of unnecessary profanity in this book. As a long time reader and fan of Tom Clancy, I was looking forward to reading this adventure. Previous Clancy books (those written by Tom himself) have had an element of profanity, normally used with effect to punctuate tense action. This book, on the other hand, was so much gratuituous use of the f*** word, it was very sickening to read. I almost quit reading several times. I'm very disappointed.

I rate the action/suspense novel Locked On by Tom Clancy 4 of 5 stars. This novel had more of a Ludlum feel to it than Clancy, but hey, I enjoyed it. A modern-day terrorist plot is at the heart of this story. The reason for four stars rather than five is that the story seemed to have several plotlines in flight that didn’t tie together in a meaningful way. In fact, the finale plotline seemed to start about ½ way into the book and it didn’t build from the pre-work done in the other plot lines. So, to me, the story was fragmented. That said, it was still a good solid story with richly developed characters. When you get to the finale story line, you’ll wonder “how the heck did we get here?”. I do recommend this book.

Not quite the good ole days of Ding & Mr. C, but quite a bit better than the garbage with Clancy's name on it or co-authored over the last half dozen years. A bit slow in parts, the Rainbow 6 warriors are being stretched beyond their years like the Bourne series. Time for some new characters & some new life in Clancy novels, that or its past the time to put down the pen for Mr. Clancy.

About the author

A little more than thirty years ago Tom Clancy was a Maryland insurance broker with a passion for naval history. Years before, he had been an English major at Baltimore’s Loyola College and had always dreamed of writing a novel. His first effort, The Hunt for Red October—the first of the phenomenally successful Jack Ryan novels—sold briskly as a result of rave reviews, then catapulted onto the New York Times bestseller list after President Reagan pronounced it “the perfect yarn.” From that day forward, Clancy established himself as an undisputed master at blending exceptional realism and authenticity, intricate plotting, and razor-sharp suspense. He passed away in October 2013.

Mark Greaney has a degree in international relations and political science. In his research for the Gray Man novels, including Mission Critical, Agent in Place, Gunmetal Gray, Back Blast, Dead Eye, Ballistic, On Target, and The Gray Man, he traveled to more than fifteen countries and trained alongside military and law enforcement in the use of firearms, battlefield medicine, and close-range combative tactics. He is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tom Clancy Support and Defend, Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect, Tom Clancy Commander in Chief, and Tom Clancy True Faith and Allegiance. With Tom Clancy, he coauthored Locked On, Threat Vector, and Command Authority.