Without Remorse | Tom Clancy | Clearly Clancy will never reach this level again!

Without Remorse | Tom Clancy | Gritty, sadistic, merciless - Clancy at his finest!

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Without Remorse

	Without Remorse Tom Clancy Berkley, 1994 - 768 pages average customer review:based on 302 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Clearly Clancy will never reach this level again!

Time to piss off a lot of people, but I've read my share of Clancy and I gotta tell you this: He's not a very good writer!!! Oh my gawd!! Someone catch the lady who just fainted. Clancy is a great researcher, which is clear in any of his books. But...that doesn't make up for transparent characters and gratuitous plot manipulations. Now . . . I loved Clear and Present Danger and Red Storm Rising, Patriot Games was okay and Hunt For Red October was straight-out boring in most parts, but I read Without Remorse when it first came out and I had hoped that Clancy had taken a Creative Writing course in his spare time between reading technical manuals for Typhoon-class submarines and interviews with the CIA. There is a different voice to Without Remorse. Its straight-forward, kick-ass reading. Reads like an early Metallica song. This is the evolution of Mr. Clark, Clancy's spook character. Vietnam-era. Someone f*cks around with a girl he cares about and all hell breaks loose. This is, hands down, the best Clancy book I have ever read. It's like his version of Diry Harry. Great. Too bad he will probably never duplicate its sheer exuberance. Oh well. Read it! It rox!

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Gritty, sadistic, merciless - Clancy at his finest!

I just finished the behemoth that is "Without Remorse," and I can say unabashedly that this is one of Clancy's finest works; a real page turner from beginning to distant end, it finally blows the lid off the mysterious history of the special-ops assassin known as John Clark.

Let me warn you: this book is certainly not for the squeamish! Much of Clancy's writing has plenty of gritty action, but this book is downright venomous in its depiction of violent, vengeful demise. Set in the late Vietnam era, retired Navy SEAL John Kelly--John Clark's true name--falls in love with Pamela, a girl fleeing the violent, tormented life of drugs and prostitution, and subsequently is drawn into her dark, sordid past. After Pamela is captured and tortured to death by her masochistic former pimps, Kelly goes on a spree of merciless reprisal, cleaning the Baltimore area of drug dealers and pimps in the coldest, most gruesomely efficient ways possible.

The famed precision of Clancy's writing shines through with the excruciating detail he describes Kelly's descent into calculated madness, all while Kelly is being drawn into his second life as John Clark, CIA's new low-intensity warfare master.

Kelly comes off as an anti-hero at times--one chapter deals with Kelly torturing a drug dealer to death in one of the most sadistic ways imaginable; it was almost hard to read the graphic detail, page after page of this dealer's absolute suffering. One almost felt as if one was reading a crime scene reconstruction! However, one can not help but side with Kelly time and again, as the mercilessness of the scum he is exterminating is ever-present.

The characterization is fantastic, and though the book is quite long--750 pages--it's a fairly quick read (it took me about 8 hours to finish, in two sittings), and absolutely worth your time! If you're new to Clancy, I recommend this book, but it might also help to start with Clear and Present Danger, as it not only introduces John Clark and enshrouds him in the mystery that makes this book so much sweeter, but it also deals with drugs and helps to cement Clark's modus operandi in both novels.

This book is a must-have for your summer reading list.

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Another Masterfully Told Story by the Name We Love.

Clancy does it again with another wonderfully descriptive tale of politics, war, corruption, and a warrior's conscience. What I personally loved so much about this book is the fact that it does not follow the traditional Clancy setting. Tom's books are normally based around a largely-developing catastrophe that bounces around (although creatively) from one character to another. WITHOUT REMORSE is a tale of much smaller scale about one man's quest for revenge. Another beautiful addition to this book is how it begins. Most of Clancy's books don't become truly interesting to me until about the 150-250 page range. This book captured my imagination from the very first sentence and never let go. This book is the first in the Clancy John Clark/Jack Ryan storyline and I am now inspired to finish the series. Thank you Again Mr. Clancy, keep writing.

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Retribution, writ large!

John Clark is the prototypical kind of hero our country needs in every community, and while I'm sure some exist, we could use more. This is one of those books I knew Clancy needed to write, and hopefully he writes more, because Clark is fantastic character.

Clearly the war on drugs has been lost at virtually every juncture. Traditional law enforcement is akin to giving everybody a can of Lysol and expecting the common cold to be cured. Yeah, you may get the obvious stuff, but there's so much out there, you're sure to miss enough to keep the supply of bacteria flowing.

While I'm not a proponent of vigilantism, few people in this country have not been touched in some way by the pushers, cookers and dealers. They aren't just on the street corners in the bad neighborhoods, either. They inhabit every socioeconomic strata, including the gated communities inhabited by the most affluent.

There are times where the viruses on humanity need to be cut out like the cancer they are, and a character like Clark can do it. Can you imagine a drug trade in a community where the dealers are shot without warning, upon getting caught dealing by a phantom hero? Or worse, are found naked and dying on the street after some torture in a hyperbaric chamber? I can. The drug trade simply wouldn't exist.

Violence should be a last resort at an conflict resolution, but when all other methods fail, then the application of violence should be undertaken -- Without Remorse.

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My favorite Clancy

First introduced to Clancy with The Hunt for Red October (don't know how to underline) I have read nearly all of his books but to be honest Jack Ryan has always dissapointed me. It is ridiculous to use the same character in so many unconnected plots and still hope to mantain realism. Ryan himself seems to have become an even weaker character now than in Clancy's early works as he now seems to be preaching his ethics constantly. I personally feel that Without Remorse is the only story of Clancy's with true character development. I did not give the book five stars as this will be reserved only for my absolute favorite books.

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