Sitting Duck PATRIOT GAMES

By Paul Gray

Out strolling during his London vacation, an ex-Marine named Jack Ryan hears an explosion and sees a Rolls-Royce disabled by the blast. Armed men approach the car, clearly intending harm to its passengers. Ryan singlehanded puts a stop to this nefariousness, suffering a shoulder wound in the process. Next morning in the hospital, he learns that he has rescued the Prince and Princess of Wales from a terrorist attack by the U.L.A., a Maoist offshoot of the Irish Republican Army.

Pretty soon the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh arrive to pay their respects, telling Ryan that his wife and young daughter are safely ensconced in Buckingham Palace and that he is now Sir John, a Knight Commander of the Victorian Order. Then the Prince drops by, a little dejected at having been exposed to the world as a helpless victim. "Sit down, goddammit!" Ryan commands and proceeds to put some starch in the heir apparent's spine. Once the American hero recovers, he joins his family at the palace, where a lovely time is had by all.

Unfortunately, this tourist-brochure fantasy is only the beginning of Patriot Games, a novel that performs the odd trick of growing exponentially less interesting with the turning of each page. Ryan returns to the U.S. and resumes his old humdrum life, teaching history at the Naval Academy, with the added burden of playing a sitting duck. For it is only a matter of time -- oodles of time -- until the U.L.A. "bad guys" attempt to punish Ryan for thwarting their plans in London.

The big mystery here is why Author Tom Clancy abandoned the Popular Mechanics formula that served him so well in The Hunt for Red October (1984) and Red Storm Rising (1986): describe enough hardware and any plot can seem plausible. Clancy occasionally hits his old stride ("Pellets fired from a shotgun disperse radially at a rate of one inch per yard of linear travel"), but this time out he concentrates on his human characters, a subject apparently beyond the range of his research. Patriot Games is a minefield of unintended comedy. When, for instance, the Princess announces that she is two months pregnant, Ryan knows just what the etiquette of the situation demands. He turns to the Prince and says, "Way to go, sir."