Hey, hey, what do you say, someone took your plans away

A lightning review of Support and Defend by Mark Greaney (New York: Putnam, 2014). Ebook.

Dom Caruso, nephew of President Jack Ryan and employee of the black intelligence agency, The Campus, is injured in a terrorist attack that kills his Israeli martial-arts trainer. The terrorists had learned from a National Security Council data breach that the trainer was a former IDF commando who had raided the Gaza "peace flotilla." The leaker is a rogue employee who is feeding intelligence to an international whistleblower organization. Caruso embarks on an unauthorized mission to catch the rogue and avenge his friend.

This is the first "Ryanverse" novel to be published without Tom Clancy's involvement following his 2013 death. I've been a fan of Clancy since the mid-90s during university. They were a relaxing break from the literary works I had to read for my coursework. Clancy's trademarks were technical accuracy and intricate, interwoven plots. Unfortunately, Mark Greaney's effort has neither: the plot of Support and Defend is linear and shows no evidence of Clancy's research into military technology and tactics. It's set in Clancy's world, but has none of Clancy's flair.

And while this may not be entirely Greaney's fault, did this novel lack an editor? At one point, out of nowhere, Russian paratroopers stage a failed attempt to abduct the NSC rogue. They are all killed and the Russians are never heard from again. This plot point has neither reason nor consequences. Was a subplot rather clumsily removed for length? Formally, I noted several missing, misplaced, and misused words, confused character names, and at one point, an entire paragraph that seemed to have been rewritten without deleting the old one afterward.

Support and Defend isn't terrible. But its numerous flaws make it merely OK.