Zero Hour

Jack Ryan, Jr. travels to Seoul to interview a possible new recruit for the Campus. The trip is meant to be routine, and it stops being routine when North Korean operatives begin a wave of violence across the South Korean capital.

The attacks have a cause far to the north. The leader of North Korea has been catastrophically injured, and his incapacitation sets off a "dead-man's switch" that wakes an army of sleeper agents in South Korea. At the same time, a struggle over who will succeed him begins.

As the peninsula slides toward a second Korean War, a mysterious woman's voice reaches Jack from inside North Korea. She offers him a way to halt the rush to war.

Her price may be more than he can afford to pay. The book is a contemporary espionage thriller in a long-running series, with the action centred on Seoul and a crisis that grows by the hour.