Patriot Games

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Patriot Games
1st edition
Author(s)	Tom Clancy
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Jack Ryan universe
Genre(s)	Thriller novel
Publisher	Putnam
Publication date	1987 (1st edition)
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	540 pp (hardback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-399-13241-4 (hardback edition)
OCLC Number	15316611
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 19
LC Classification	PS3553.L245 P38 1987
Preceded by	The Hunt for Red October
Followed by	The Cardinal of the Kremlin

Patriot Games (1987) is a novel by Tom Clancy. It is chronologically the first book (predating the events in The Hunt for Red October) focusing on CIA analyst Jack Ryan, the main character in almost all of Clancy's novels. It is the indirect sequel to Without Remorse. The title comes from an Irish Rebel Song called "The Patriot Game", an Irish ballad about the Border Campaign in Northern Ireland.

Plot

Ryan saves the (unnamed) Prince and Princess of Wales, along with their newborn firstborn son, from a fictional Irish terrorist group, the Ulster Liberation Army (ULA), by incapacitating one of the terrorists, taking his semi-automatic pistol and shooting another during a kidnapping attempt on the London Mall. The incapacitated terrorist, Sean Miller, is sentenced to life imprisonment for killing the Prince and Princess' driver (the maximum penalty in the United Kingdom) but is freed by members of the ULA as he is being transported to prison. The ULA later goes after Ryan and his family, partially as an act of revenge, but primarily because they seek to reduce public (and specifically American) support for the rival Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). The ULA plans a strike against Jack Ryan and his family. The assassin sent to kill Ryan is intercepted before he manages to complete his task, but Ryan's expectant wife, Cathy, and daughter, Sally, are hurt by the terrorists: their car crashes after Sean Miller sprays it with automatic gunfire from a Uzi on the freeway. They are flown by helicopter to the University of Maryland Medical Center.

After the attack on his family, Jack accepts an offer from the CIA to start working as an analyst at CIA headquarters. Later, the Prince and Princess of Wales come to visit Ryan in America. This gives the ULA another opportunity to conduct another operation—they plan to kill Ryan and his family and kidnap the Royal Family. The attack ultimately fails: after a firefight and a flight, Jack, his friend Robby Jackson, and the Prince, with the help of Marines and sailors from the Naval Academy and local police, manage to apprehend and subdue the terrorists. The ultimate fate of the terrorists is not stated but is predictable: to face trial for murder in a country with the death penalty. Ryan arrives at Bethesda after the final arrest to be with Cathy for the birth of their son, who will be godparented by Robby Jackson and his wife, as well as the Prince and Princess of Wales.

In Clancy's later novel The Sum of All Fears, it is mentioned in passing that Miller and his colleagues were sentenced to death and executed for their crimes. Jack Ryan, Jr., the son born at the novel's close, follows his father into the CIA, and becomes a central character in Clancy's first post-President-Ryan novel, The Teeth of the Tiger.

Film adaptation

The novel was adapted as a feature film in 1992. It stars Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan and Sean Bean as Sean Miller. Among the most significant changes were that the Prince of Wales is replaced as the terrorists' target with "Lord Holmes" (James Fox), the Queen Mother's cousin and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland; and Sean Miller is motivated by personal revenge against Ryan, who fatally shoots Miller's younger brother in the opening scene.