SOURCE: "Crackdown in Colombia," in Book World—The Washington Post, August 13, 1989, pp. 1, 8.

In the following review, Thomas offers a favorable assessment of Clear and Present Danger.

In his search for a fictional clear and present danger that the nation might attack with its latest military hardware, Tom Clancy, novelist laureate of the military-industrial complex, has discovered the drug cartel that operates out of Medellin, Colombia, and that is getting enormously rich from America's apparently insatiable demand for cocaine.

And a rousing adventure it is, too, what with a fake military hanging aboard a Coast Guard cutter, plus several squads of U.S. Army infantrymen, all superbly trained killers, who are covertly infiltrated into Colombia only to be abandoned by a feckless national security adviser to the president.

There is also the reappearance of Clancy's favorite hero, Jack Ryan, U.S. Marine, stockbroker, history professor, knight of the British...