When I was in my late teens, early twenties (God that seems like a lifetime ago!), I read, as I recall, all of Tom Clancy’s novels, and enjoyed them thoroughly. Though his novels on espionage and military intelligence are often frowned upon by literary snobs, his stuff was always meticulously researched (It’s been reported that his knowledge of Russian nuclear subs in “The Hunt For Red October” was so broad and spot-on that it alarmed U.S. intelligence officials, who thought he may have been a Russian spy) and fun to read. Years before 9/11, he wrote about terrorists crashing commercial airliners into the White House and the Pentagon. And with a stellar track record as a bit of a psychic already solidified, it appears that now, in the twilight of his career, Clancy may have outdone himself.
Reports the Daily Beast:
In December, the author of The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games published his first novel in seven years, Dead or Alive, this one with the help of a coauthor, Grant Blackwood. In it, Clancy’s version of bin Laden is finally caught—and when he is, he turns out not to be hiding in the lawless mountain regions along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, as most of the fictional intelligence community believes. Instead, he’s been biding his time in an upscale house (“must have set him back a million”) that is a shortish drive from a major city, and just a few miles from a major military institution. He works only with couriers and bodyguards. A super-elite Navy SEAL is on the team that takes him down. Oh, and one of the book’s rejected titles? In Plain Sight.
That’s just too bizarre. Tom Clancy is like the lovechild of Nostradamus and Miss Cleo or something.
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