cover image Tom Clancy: Under Fire

Tom Clancy: Under Fire

Grant Blackwood. Putnam, $28.95 (512p) ISBN 978-0-399-17575-6

In this strong addition to bestseller Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series from Blackwood, who collaborated with Clancy (1947%E2%80%932013) on 2010's Dead or Alive, Jack Ryan Jr., a member of the secret U.S. government organization known as the Campus, gets involved in an elaborate plan to break the Republic of Dagestan away from the Russian Federation and establish it as a democracy. Ultranationalist Russian president Valeri Volodin is determined to foil the plotters, who have lined up Dagestan's interior minister, Rebaz Medzhid, to become the country's new president. When kidnappers take Medzhid's college-age daughter, Aminat, it's unclear at first whether they wish to assure the minister's participation or force him to back out. Either way, Jack must rescue Aminat and help implement the coup. It's a classic case of spy vs. spy with friends and enemy agents being equally dangerous and perfidious. Clancy fans will be pleased to discover that in Blackwood's more than capable hands, Jack remains the all-American hero they remember. Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, WME. (June)