Clear and Present Danger is one of the strongest entries in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan saga, a sprawling thriller about the hidden cost of an undeclared war. When a prominent American businessman -- a friend of the President -- is murdered by a Colombian drug cartel, Washington authorizes a covert campaign against the cartels' leadership. Soldiers are inserted into the jungle, airstrikes are ordered, and the whole operation is kept off the books, unsanctioned by Congress and deniable by design.
Now the CIA's Deputy Director of Intelligence, Jack Ryan believes he is reading routine reports until he begins to grasp what is really happening in his own government's name. As the secret war goes wrong and the men sent to fight it are quietly abandoned to protect the powerful, Ryan is left to decide how far he will go to expose the truth -- while field operatives John Clark and Domingo Chavez fight to survive on the ground.
Sharper and angrier than Clancy's earlier books, the novel weighs loyalty against legality and asks what a "clear and present danger" really justifies. Combining large-scale action with a pointed critique of unaccountable power, it became a number-one bestseller and a hit film starring Harrison Ford.