Clear and Present Danger is a political thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and published on August 17, 1989. A sequel to The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988), main character Jack Ryan becomes acting Deputy Director of Intelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency, and discovers that he is being kept in the dark by his colleagues who are conducting a covert war against a drug cartel based in Colombia. It debuted at number one on The New York Times bestseller list. A film adaptation, featuring Harrison Ford reprising his role as Ryan, was released on August 3, 1994.
Yardie is a term often used, particularly within the Caribbean expatriate and Jamaican diaspora, to refer to people of Jamaican origin, though its exact meaning changes depending on context. The term is derived from the Jamaican patois for “home” or "yard". The term may have specifically originated from the crowded "government yards" of two-storey government-funded concrete homes found in Kingston and inhabited by poorer Jamaican residents, though "yard" can also refer to "home" or "turf" in general in Jamaican patois.
Richard Skeffington Welch was a career Central Intelligence Agency officer. He was the Chief of Station (COS) in Athens, Greece, when he was assassinated by the Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N). His assassination led to the passage of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, making it a crime to expose or identify officers working in covert roles who had not officially been acknowledged as such by the U.S. government.
The Smile Jamaica Concert was a reggae concert held on 5 December 1976, at the National Heroes Park in Kingston, Jamaica, aimed at countering political violence. Bob Marley had agreed to perform but two days before the concert he was shot in his home. He recovered and with The Wailers played a 90-minute set for the 80,000 people in attendance.
The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is the national police force of Jamaica.
Griselda Blanco Restrepo, known as the Black Widow or Cocaine Godmother, was a Colombian drug lord who was prominent in the cocaine-based drug trade and underworld of Miami, US, during the 1970s through the early 2000s, and who has also been claimed by some to have been part of the Medellín Cartel. Blanco was assassinated in Medellín on September 3, 2012, aged 69.
Tree of Smoke is a 2007 novel by American author Denis Johnson which won the National Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It is about a man named Skip Sands who joins the CIA in 1965, and begins working in Vietnam during the American involvement there. The time frame of the novel is from 1963 to 1970, with a coda set in 1983. One of the protagonists of Tree of Smoke is Bill Houston, who was the main character in Johnson's 1983 debut novel Angels.
A drug lord, drug baron, kingpin, or lord of drugs is a type of crime boss, who is in charge of a drug-trafficking network, organization, or enterprise.
Christopher Michael Coke, also known as Dudus, is a convicted Jamaican drug lord and the leader of the Shower Posse, a violent drug gang started by his father Lester Coke in Jamaica, which exported "large quantities" of marijuana and cocaine into the United States.
Tivoli Gardens is a neighbourhood in Kingston, Jamaica. Developed as a renewal project between 1963 and 1965, the neighbourhood continued to suffer from poverty. By the late twentieth century it had become a center of drug trafficking activity and social unrest. Repeated confrontations took place between law enforcement and gunmen in the neighbourhood in 1997, 2001, 2005, 2008, and 2010.
Shower Posse is a Jamaican gang, started by Lester Lloyd Coke, which is involved in drug and arms smuggling. Its home is in Tivoli Gardens in Jamaica. It has several North American branches. The North American branches were first founded by Vivian Blake in the Canadian city of Toronto, Ontario. The gang operates in expatriate Jamaican communities in the US states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the city of Miami, Florida.
Against All Enemies is a spy thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and co-authored with Peter Telep, and published on June 14, 2011. While it is set in the Ryanverse, it features a new character, ex-Navy SEAL and CIA paramilitary operations officer Max Moore, as he is tasked by a government joint task force to bring down a Mexican drug cartel and prevent Taliban terrorists from carrying out attacks in the United States. The book debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
Marlon James is a Jamaican writer. He is the author of five novels: John Crow's Devil (2005), The Book of Night Women (2009), A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), which won him the 2015 Man Booker Prize, Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019), and Moon Witch, Spider King (2022). Now living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the U.S., James teaches literature at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is also a faculty lecturer at St. Francis College's Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing.
The 2015 Booker Prize for Fiction was awarded at a ceremony on 13 October 2015. A longlist of thirteen titles was announced on 29 July, narrowed down to a shortlist of six titles on 15 September.
John Crow's Devil is the 2005 debut novel by author Marlon James. The book was first published by Akashic Books in New York. The story is set in 1957 in the fictional town of Gibbeah, Jamaica, where two men fight to be the town's singular religious leader. James portrays the fight between the two men as a struggle between good and evil and incorporates magical realism, with miracles woven into the plot similar.
On December 3, 1976, seven armed men raided the residence of reggae musician Bob Marley in Kingston, Jamaica, two days before Marley was to stage a concert in an attempt to quell recent violence. Politicians from across the political spectrum hoped to capitalize on Marley's support. While Marley remained neutral, many viewed him as tacitly supporting the prime minister Michael Manley and his democratic socialist People's National Party (PNP). Marley and three others were shot, but all survived.
The Jamaican political conflict is a long-standing feud between right-wing and left-wing elements in the country, often exploding into violence. The Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) and the People's National Party (PNP) have fought for control of the island for years and the rivalry has encouraged urban warfare in Kingston. Each side believes the other to be controlled by foreign elements; the JLP is said to be backed by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the PNP is said to have been backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba.
Jorge Ayala-Rivera, also known as "Rivi" is a Colombian criminal who is best known for his work as a hitman for Medellín Cartel leader Griselda Blanco. In 1993, Ayala was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
Lester Lloyd Coke, commonly known as Jim Brown, was a Jamaican drug lord and the founder of the Shower Posse, a gang based out of the Tivoli Gardens garrison community in West Kingston. Coke was identified by the Netflix documentary ReMastered: Who Shot the Sheriff as present and a party to the shooting of Bob Marley on 3 December 1976.
The Hon. Kenneth Arthur Newton Jones (1924–1964), better known as Ken Jones, was a Jamaican politician and former Minister of Communications and Works (1962–1964).
