An attempt to kidnap the Prince and Princess of Wales and their infant son[note 1] occurs on the Mall in London. The attack is orchestrated by the Ulster Liberation Army (ULA), a splinter group of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). However, history professor and former U.S. MarineJack Ryan intervenes, incapacitating one attacker, Sean Miller. During the gun battle, Ryan is wounded by John Michael McCrory as they exchange gunfire. McCrory is killed and Miller is arrested.
While recovering, Ryan is honored by the British government and is granted the honorary Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by Queen Elizabeth II. Meanwhile, Miller is sentenced to life imprisonment for the kidnapping attempt; however, his ULA compatriots, led by Kevin O'Donnell, free him while he is being transported to a maximum security prison in the Isle of Wight. They escape to their secret camp in the North African desert, as Miller vows revenge on Ryan.
Ryan returns to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland to teach naval history, confident that the ULA will not attack him. Still, he takes up firearms training as a precaution. Meanwhile, Miller persuades O'Donnell to launch an operation in the U.S. aimed at targeting Ryan and his family, with assistance from African-American domestic terrorist Alexander Dobbens. Though primarily for revenge, the operation is also designed to reduce American support for the rival PIRA, which is to be blamed for the upcoming attack. The assassin sent to kill Ryan at the Naval Academy is intercepted before he completes his task; however, his wife, Cathy, and daughter, Sally, are seriously injured when Miller shoots at them and causes their car to crash on a freeway. They are transported to a nearby hospital in Annapolis for treatment.
After the attack, Ryan accepts an offer by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s Deputy Director of Intelligence James Greer to work there as an analyst. He helps them analyze satellite imagery of ULA’s suspected camp, leading to a raid on an Action Directe camp by French intelligence (DGSE). Later, the Prince and Princess of Wales schedule a trip to the United States, which includes a stop at Ryan's home in Maryland. This provides another opportunity for Miller, who launches a sneak attack with assistance from Dobbens to kidnap the Prince and Princess of Wales as well as Ryan's family.
Although several guards around the house are killed, Jack, his wife and daughter, his friend, Lieutenant Commander Robert Jefferson "Robby" Jackson and his wife Sissy, and the Prince and Princess of Wales escape via a speed boat at the Chesapeake Bay. After getting the women to safety, Jack, Robby, and the Prince enlist the help of Naval Academy sailors and United States Marines as Miller, O’Donnell, and the rest of the ULA terrorists are lured into a waiting Cyprus-flagged container ship seized by the United States Coast Guard. Ryan corners Miller in the ship and tries to kill him, but is restrained. After the terrorists are apprehended, Ryan arrives in Annapolis for the birth of his son, Jack Ryan, Jr.
Dennis Cooley: Rare bookshop owner; agent for the ULA. After being compromised by British law enforcement, he volunteers for the ULA’s attack on the Ryan residence, but is shot dead by his own compatriot.
Geoffrey Watkins: Liaison between the British Foreign Office and the Royal Family; revealed to be the ULA mole that secretly passed information to O'Donnell through Cooley. Commits suicide after Miller, O'Donnell, and other ULA terrorists get arrested.
Alexander Dobbens: Member of an African-American domestic terrorist group referred to as "the Movement"; assisted the ULA in their operations in the United States. Killed by Miller after learning that Ryan escaped from his residence during their attack.
Themes
Patriot Games was notable for subverting the moral ambiguity of the antagonists in espionage novels by John le Carré, Len Deighton, and Robert Ludlum. According to Marc Cerasini's essay on the novel, "Clancy's sensible revulsion toward the terrorists is so strident and intense...that it verges on the physical." He added that "the author's understandable disgust toward his villains is 'bourgeois', for there is not a shred of sympathy for these Irish 'patriots'."
The novel is also said to be inspired by the gothic horror genre in the depiction of the ULA as "twisted political misfits" who practice political violence in the vein of Count Dracula and his "family", as well as other gothic elements like the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales.[2]
Development
Clancy started working on the storyline for Patriot Games in 1979,[3] alongside other novels featuring Jack Ryan which would later be published: The Hunt for Red October (1984) and The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988). He says of his passion for accuracy and detail: "When I was in London, researching Patriot Games, I spent 20 hours walking around the Mall with a camera, clipboard and tape recorder, just choreographing my opening chapter, to make sure it would happen exactly the way I wrote it. Later, when I took my kids there, I could tell them, 'This is the tree that Jack Ryan hid his wife and daughter behind, and that's the road where the bad guys escaped.' I feel a moral obligation to my readers to get it right. In the insurance business, you have to pay attention to details or a client could lose everything. A doctor has to, a cop, a fireman, why not a writer?"[3] Although he was criticized for toning down the novel's technical details in comparison to The Hunt for Red October, Clancy considers Patriot Games to be his best.[3]
Discussing the final scene where Jack Ryan lets the primary antagonist Sean Miller live instead of killing him, Clancy remarked: "Of all the letters I got on Patriot Games, not one said, 'He should have killed the little bastard.' Personally I'd have done it. You harm my kids and I'll blow you away. You don't touch my kids. But I'm not Jack Ryan. He has to be in control. He plays by the rules." [3]
Reception
Commercially, Patriot Games debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list for the week of August 2, 1987. It has since sold over 1,063,000 hardcover copies by the next year.[4]
Critically, the book received generally positive reviews. The New York Times praised it as "a powerful piece of popular fiction; its plot, if implausible, is irresistible, and its emotions are universal."[3] However, Kirkus Reviews's verdict is mixed, stating that "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."[5]
The novel was adapted as a feature film, which was released on June 5, 1992. Jack Ryan was played by Harrison Ford and Sean Miller was played by Sean Bean. The film is notable for being the sequel to the previous movie The Hunt for Red October (1990), although the order is the opposite in the books. Additionally, the Prince and Princess of Wales were replaced by Lord Holmes, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Queen's cousin, as the ULA's primary target. Patriot Games spent two weeks as the No. 1 film, eventually grossing $178,051,587 in worldwide box office business.[6] It has garnered generally positive reviews, and earned a 73% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 33 reviews.[7]
Conversely, the movie was criticized by Clancy for deviating too much from the source material, stating that "I don't like eating dirt, and I won't eat any from these guys." "There is only one, maybe two, scenes in the shooting script that correspond to a scene in the book," Clancy later added. "They have a movie called Patriot Games that uses my characters—but it's not my story."[8] He eventually asked for his name to be removed from the film's promotional materials, and in an apparent countermove, entered negotiations with the same team at Paramount Pictures to sell the rights to his other novel The Sum of All Fears (1991). By the time the film was released in 2002, the author had cooled off on the idea of having his books made into films.[9]
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