Tom Clancy died in a Baltimore hospital on Oct. 1, 2013, at age 66. He was an influential writer who redefined the modern thriller genre.
Tom Clancy’s name immediately brings to mind a specific mystery genre—"techno thrillers." Wrapped in espionage, these thrillers heavily rely on technology to move the plot along with lots of military terms and a world in jeopardy thrown in for good measure.
The specific stories may have melded together, one plot a template for the other, but that never stopped Clancy’s novels from landing on the bestsellers lists, time and time again. That’s because with a Tom Clancy novel, readers knew precisely what they were getting.
Clancy, who died in a Baltimore hospital on Oct. 1, 2013, at age 66, may have been one of the first modern thriller writers to evolve his name into a brand. Clancy’s name attached to a novel or a video game or a film almost guaranteed sales.
Clancy, of course, wasn’t the first author to latch onto the branding idea. Charles Dickens knew the potential of name recognition, and I doubt even Dickens was the first.
For Clancy, it all started The Hunt for Red October, which started out as an almost insignificant novel published by the Naval Institute Press. Insignificant, that is, until Putnam acquired the rights and published it in 1984 and it became an almost instant bestseller.
The Hunt for Red October introduced Jack Ryan, a thoughtful CIA analyst who, as the novels progressed, would eventually become the US president. In the movies, he was played first by Alec Baldwin, then by Harrison Ford and most recently Ben Affleck. Each actor captured the spirit of Clancy’s character.
His string of thrillers included Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears. Each became No. 1 bestsellers as well as huge movie hits.
But the movies based on his novels also made people realize that at the heart of Clancy’s dense, tech-ridden novels was a good story.
The late Elmore Leonard was famous for saying that he left out of his novels the stuff that people didn’t read. Tom Clancy was famous for not only leaving that stuff in, but then adding to it. One could read 10 pages, 20 pages, sometimes even more, steeped in techno-speak before getting back to the story.
Clancy also was one of the first authors to see the potential in video games to reach a more adult market. In 1996, Clancy was one of the co-founders of the video game developer Red Storm Entertainment. Dozens of bestselling video game titles have prominently featured his name, including Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell.
About the only thing that Clancy didn’t put his name on was the Baltimore Orioles, of which he was a co-owner.
Clancy took a seven-year hiatus from his novels, returning in 2010 with Dead or Alive co-written with Glenn Blackwood.
Dead or Alive, which featured Ryan, among his other well-known characters, also marked a turning point for Clancy as a writer. His next several books would be written with a co-writer.
But this shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. For at least a decade before, Clancy’s name had been associated with a string of ghost writers. The ABC miniseries Tom Clancy’s Net Force aired during 1998, setting the path for a string of novels tied-in to the series and written by others.
Clancy’s next novel will be Command Authority co-written with Mark Greaney, to be published on December 3, 2013. The novel features the former CIA agent and President Jack Ryan and his son Jack Ryan Jr.
