I loved reading the classic stories of unlikely heroes, overcoming impossible odds, working together (sometimes even unknowningly), toward a common goal. These were stories of right and wrong, of good and evil. And the cause of good and right prevailed...
In a culture in which we have made a hero out of a serial killer (Dexter) and our TV fare is dominated by cop shows in which the good guys do not always wear a white hat or win, Clancy was a voice for order, for peace, for some sense of justice, and for right. From the Snapped-style reality shows that tell the story of murders and then leaves you hanging as to who is guilty and who is innocent, we find the final detail so often missing -- goodness, right, and justice. But Clancy was the master of ending with the evil somehow either getting their just desserts or kept in check for now (sequels were, after all, his bread and butter) and with hope.
His books were long, intricately woven plots, with massive details that informed as much as they contributed to the overall story. But I can still repeat several hundred lines of dialog from memory, including a few bits of Ruskie learned from The Hunt for Red October. Even though the face of Jack Ryan morphed through different actors in different films, it did not seem to hinder the success of the movie since the key to it all was action, twist, turn, and the right prevailing...
Growing up Roman Catholic in Baltimore, his education was all-Catholic -- from elementary to college. Perhaps it was here that he learned the morality that governed his fiction. Right and wrong, the right prevailing... Whatever the case, I will miss him and his fiction remains some of my favorite reading and viewing "guilty" pleasures...
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