Friends and stars paid tribute to bestselling US novelist Tom Clancy who passed away this week at the age of 66.
The author thrilled thousands of readers with graphic descriptions of soldiers and spies in novels including The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games.
Clancy’s works closely tracked Americans’ security fears, moving from Cold War face-offs to terrorist attacks and both fascinated readers with their high-stakes plots and enthralled military experts with their precise details.
The books also inspired Hollywood blockbuster films including Clear and Present Danger, starring Harrison Ford, and a series of video games.
Ford and actors Alec Baldwin and Ben Affleck played Jack Ryan, one of Clancy’s most famous characters, on the big screen.
“Spending time with Tom prior to shooting was the best part of that whole experience for me,” said Baldwin, who starred in the 1990s’ The Hunt for Red October.
“Tom was smart, a great storyteller and a real gentleman.”
Clancy’s career also benefited from fans within Washington power circles. His 1984 debut The Hunt for Red October, the account of a rogue naval commander on a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine, won praise from then-president Ronald Reagan, who declared it a good “yarn”.
The detail of Clancy’s novels sometimes raised eyebrows among the intelligence community
In total, Clancy published 25 fiction and non-fiction books, which also included The Sum of All Fears and Rainbow Six. Later books moved on from the Cold War to deal with terrorism and friction between the US and China.
The detail of Clancy’s novels sometimes raised eyebrows in the intelligence community. According to The New York Times, in a 1986 interview, Clancy recalled meeting Navy Secretary John Lehman whose first question about Red October was “Who the hell cleared it?” But the accurate description of the US military won him fans in uniform.
“His earlier books were ones that had great following in the military because of their accuracy,” said Tad Oelstrom, a retired US Air Force lieutenant-general, who now serves as director of the national security programme at Harvard University.
Oelstrom recalled meeting Clancy at a dinner in 1999 at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Even at the height of his fame, when surrounded by high-ranking fliers telling war stories, Clancy was a careful listener, Oelstrom said.
“My suspicion is he was soaking up as much as he was giving, just because of the stories that were being told about the Vietnam era,” Oelstrom said.
His most recent book, Threat Vector, debuted at the top of the Publishers Weekly bestseller list in December 2012.
Clancy’s next book, Command Authority, is due to be published on December 3.
Clancy is survived by his wife Alexandra Llewellyn Clancy and their daughter Alexis Jacqueline Page Clancy, and four children from a previous marriage to Wanda King, including Michelle Bandy, Christine Blocksidge, Kathleen Clancy and Thomas Clancy 3rd.
In a 1992 interview with The Baltimore Sun, he attributed much of his success to being “lucky,” saying he had a normal middle-class American upbringing.
“I was a little nerdy but a completely normal kid,” Clancy told the newspaper. “Mom and Dad loved each other. It was like Leave It to Beaver.”