PATRIOT GAMES

Jack Ryan, the hero of Clancy's The Hunt for Red October, returns to fight a radical Marxist Irish terrorist organization bent on capturing the Prince of Wales. Ryan, more or less fully detached from the CIA, is now just another filthy rich ex-stockbroker and Ph.D. teaching history at the US Naval Academy. Mixing business with pleasure, he's in London with his ophthalmologist wife and four-year-old daughter seeing the sights and digging in the archives, but the vacation gets blown to pieces when Ryan intercedes in a daring daylight attempt to kidnap the Prince and Princess of Wales and little Will. Ryan saves the Royals, taking a bullet in the shoulder, and finds, when he wakes up in hospital, that he's made some Very Important Friendships and picked up a knighthood. Not bad for the son of an Irish-American cop. But, alas, he's also picked up the fatal and eternal enmity of Mr. Sean Miller, an unusually vicious member of something called the Ulster Liberation Army, a new and shadowy bunch much like Islamic Jihad, only nastier. Awash in Royal Gratitude, Sir John and Lady Ryan take the Concorde back to the US, only to find that Miller and the U.L.A. are not at all frightened by the taboo on Irish terrorism in America. The Ryans barely survive one attack only to face greater danger as the Waleses drop in for a barbecue. Exciting shoot-outs and chases, and lots of Royal wish-fulfillment; but without naval authenticity to bolster the prose, Clancy is a fish out of water.