Tom Clancy has an extensive collection of books that, when not graded accordingly, get readers confused on where to start from. The American novelist always finds a way of dragging readers into the imaginary world through his roles. He is a pro for holding his fans constantly intrigued in all of his publications. With his invented character Jack Ryan appearing in a number of his books, right from his first published book, The Hunt for Red October in 1984, down to the latest publication titled Chain of Command in 2021, he has been able to keep his fans busy with his books.
The character Jack Ryan was born in the year 1950 to a family in Baltimore, Maryland. He comes from a military background, as his father Emmet William Ryan participated in World War II and retired as a homicide lieutenant at the Baltimore Police Department. His older brother also served in the U.S. Army’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment under 101st Airborne Division. The fictional character passed through Boston College where he graduated with a bachelor of art degree in economics. He was after that recruited as a commissioned officer with the rank of second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. Following an event that caused damage to his back in the marine, Jack left for the Wall Street investment firm as a Stockbroker.
Tom Clancy made Jack Ryan his prominent figure in his books, adding that the story is based on actual events. At the death of Tom Clancy in 2013, Mark Greaney took up the fictional character of Jack Ryan Jr.
The Best Books On Jack Ryan In Order of Publication
1. The Hunt for Red October (1984)
- Ratings: Goodreads – 4.1/5, Audible: 4.8/5
- Publication Date: October 1, 1984.
- Publisher: Naval Institute Press
- Language: English
- Print Length: 296 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 96,681 copies sold
The Hunt for Red October is the first book written by Tom Clancy in 1984 that announced his prowess in literature. The novel presents a controversial situation involving Soviet Naval submarine commander Marko Ramius. They had a plan to sneak into the United States sea territories unnoticed with the caterpillar drive, a Soviet Navy ballistic missile submarine known as Red October. Both armies were in dire need of her. On the verge of waging war, both armies embarked on a dangerous mission and unimaginable chase that ever took place across the ocean.
2. Patriot Game (1987)
- Ratings: Goodreads 4.1/5, Audible 4.6/5
- Publication Date: August 4, 1987.
- Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
- Language: English
- Print Length: 540 page
- Best Sellers Rank: 49,820 copies sold
This is a novel by Tom Clancy, which was published in July 1987. It is the novel that gave rise to Without Remorse, written in 1993. The story is about a kidnap attempt on the Prince and Princess of Wales in a mall in London by the Ulster Liberation Army. Jack Ryan, a protagonist and significant character in Tom Clancy’s novels, was in the rescue. He shot Sean Miller and killed the brother of John Michael McCrory. Jack also got injured on the shoulder by a gunshot by the other McCrory. Jack Ryan became a knight as an honor for his heroic rescue of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Despite being arrested during the attack, Miller was later freed by Kevin O’Donnell during millers transport to prison.
Miller, who vowed to take his revenge on Jack Ryan, charged O’Donnell to attack Jack Ryan and his family in America. They engaged an African-American domestic terrorist group called The Movement. The movement carried out the plan, and Jack Ryan’s wife and daughter were injured in a car accident caused by Miller. The Prince and Princess of Wales came to Jack Ryan’s house in Maryland, but this presented another opportunity for an attack. The attack took the lives of so many guards, but with the help of the police and other agencies, the enemies were defeated. The story also recorded the birth of Jack Ryan Jr, who is frequently used by the successor of Tom Clancy in recent novels.
3. The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988)
- Ratings: Goodreads 4.1/5, Audible 4.6/5
- Publication date: July 26, 1988.
- Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
- Language: English
- Page Length: 543 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 63,757 copies sold
The Cardinal of the Kremlin is a spy fiction written by Tom Clancy. The novel focuses on a personal aide to the Soviet Minister of Defence known as Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov, an insider for the CIA. He provided them with technical, military, and political intelligence. Filitov is given a secret name known as CARDINAL and was assigned to investigate a project by the Soviet Union, an anti-ballistic missile research project known as Bright Star. In achieving this, Filitov’s information alerted the KGB and then kept him on close watch. The Moscow CIA branch, headed by Edward Foley, immediately disconnected the link between the CIA and Filitov’s activities but was saddled with ensuring the safety of Filitov and his family.
The CARDINAL was arrested, placed under psychological torture, and was compelled to expose Foley, but he was placed on diplomatic immunity. Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst, set up a plan to ensure the extraction of Filitov. He was able to achieve this by buying his way into Nikolay Gerasimov, the KGB chairman. Jack Ryan used the advantage of the next ambition of Gerasimov of being the General Secretary, threatening to deny him of the position because of his anti-American ideology and the actual truth of real events of the Red October.
Gerasimov finally secured the release of Filitov and immediately planned a union between Filitov and Jack Ryan with other negotiators at the Sheremetyevo Airport. Jack was captured by KGB officer Sergey Golovko, and a Russian jet by the name MiG-25 ordered to return the plane carrying Filitov and other delegates to Russia. Still, it was not possible as they successfully crossed their airspace. Unfortunately, Filitov died from a heart attack.
4. Clear and Present Danger (1989)
- Ratings: Goodreads 4.1/5, Audible 4.7/5
- Publication date: August 17, 1989
- Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
- Language: English
- Print Length: 656 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 116,668 copies sold
Tom Clancy wrote Clear and Present Danger on August 17, 1989. The book sold over 1,625,544 hardcopies which brought it to the height of the New York Times best-selling book list in the 1980s. It stirred the situation surrounding the reelection of the president of the United States of America. The president encountered an opponent who used the inabilities of controlling drug trafficking in the state to get support.
To avoid this, the president initiated a covert operation against drug trafficking. This action was headed by the Director and the Deputy Director CIA, Robert Ritter and Arthur Moore. A troop divided into four of 11 men each were codenamed Banner, Knife, Omen, and Feature, to infiltrate the activities of the drug cartels in the country, which are called the Hispanic Men. Ernesto Escobedo is the cartel leader whose money laundry business channels worth $650 million were confiscated by the FBI. This made the drug lord carry out a war against the FBI by ordering a hit on Emil Jacobs, the secretary of FBI director, knowing fully well it would get to other FBI top officials. On a visit to the office of the Attorney General of Colombia, they were ambushed and killed alongside the Head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Ambassador to Colombia.
The action of Ernesto Escobedo infuriated the president, and he ordered an airstrike on a meeting of several cartel members, eliminating every one of them. Cortez, an adviser to Escobedo, found out about the U.S. government’s plans to eradicate the Columbian drug cartel but refused to tell the boss to get him eliminated for him to be able to assume the seat of power of the Cartel. Jack Ryan took the post of the Deputy Director of CIA after James Geer was hospitalized for pancreatic cancer. He had a feeling that the CIA had a hand on the cartel operations. He further confronted the president for not informing him of the processes in Columbia, which almost started a war. A setup was made against Escobedo, turning his fellow cartel lords against him. It was Cortez, who is known as a traitor among his cartel, that returned to Cuba.
5. Debt of Honor (1995)
- Ratings: Goodreads 4.1/5, Audible 4.5/5
- Publication Date: July 31, 1995
- Publisher: Harpercollins Pub Ltd
- Language: English
- Print Length: 912
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,694,094 copies sold
Published on August 17 in 1994 by G.P Putnam’s Sons, the novel is the continuation of events from the 1991 published novel titled The Sum of All Fears. The story is centered on the vengeful acts of Razio Yamata, a Japanese industrialist. Yamata believed that the American forces brutally killed his father in an invasion of the island of Saipan during World War II. In America’s 16th most populous state, a fatal accident involving a faulty gas tank produced in Japan killed six American citizens. This resulted in the banishment of Japanese products in America. The bans resulted in a severe economic downslope for Japan. The Japanese association headed by Yamata decided to take it to another economic and military war level strictly against the United States of America. China and India secretly supported this plot against the Americans.
Japan carried out a series of successful attacks on America. The first was a self-defense force occupation of the marina islands, but it had no casualties. Again, the Japanese were conducting a joint military exercise and mistakenly fired torpedoes on the U.S. naval fleet in the Pacific Ocean. This had severe damage on the U.S. Navy fleet by destroying two submarines and dysfunctioning two aircraft carriers. They also moved on to the second phase, which was an economic war. The Japanese contracted a programmer who manipulated the system by inserting a malicious code that thwarts the system functions until specific rules are followed, which drastically pulled down the U.S. stock exchange market; they didn’t stop in this. They also killed the president of the Federal Reserve Bank. To avoid retaliation from the U.S. government, the Japanese government immediately sought peace by calling for international peace talks.
The present president of the United States of America, President Roger, decided to pull Jack Ryan back by appointing him the National Security Advisor. Jack Ryan advised the president to tackle the economic attack first before taking military action. The U.S. stock market was successfully restored by a technique called “do-over,” which entails discarding all the trade transactions of the day. The United States then proceeded with a military counterattack by blinding a Japanese E-767 pilot with flash blindness that made the jet crash on landing. The U.S. also destroyed all Japanese airborne early warning and control systems, after which they proceeded to eliminate their ICBM hidden silos.
The book also revealed the reason for the forceful resignation of vice president Ed Kealty. This gave an open door for Jack Ryan to be nominated as the vice president under President Roger. An angry pilot who lost his son during the conflict flew the Boeing 747 into the U.S. capitol, which killed President Roger and members of the congress and other members of the U.S. higher rank. Jack Ryan was lucky as he was on his way to being sworn in as the vice president of the United States of America. After the incident, Jack Ryan was sworn in as the president of the United States of America.
6. Executive Orders (1996)
- Ratings: Goodreads 4.1/5, Audible 4.7/5
- Publication Date: August 13, 1996.
- Publisher: G.P. Putnam
- Language: English
- Print Length: 874 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,080,832 copies sold
Executive Order is a continuation of Debt of Honor, released on August 13, 1996. Jack Ryan is the newly elected President of the United States of America and he is faced with many problems. He was also facing an attack from Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, an Iranian leader. The president took advantage of the death of Saddam Hussein to join Iran and Iraq to form the United Islamic Republic. He used the opportunity to launch several attacks like a biological virus known as Ebola and an attempt to assassinate the president and kidnap the daughter of Jack Ryan in the United States. These attempts attracted martial law, which led to a travel ban to contain the effects of the Ebola Virus in the country.
The United States ordered the campus, an intelligence organization and private military company publicly known as Hendley Associates, to investigate the cause of the Ebola virus in Africa. This brought the involvement of Daryaei. President Jack Ryan mobilized the United States military to assist Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in fighting the United Islamic Republic. John Clark and Chavez were sent to Tehran, the supposed capital of ‘UIR,’ with the help of Russian intelligence to eliminate Daryaei. Ayatollah was neutralized in his house through a bomb struck from F-117 Nighthawks. President Jack Ryan ordered all those involved in the Ebola attack to face charges in the United States, which led to the destruction of the facility used for the virus. This also brought in a foreign policy known as the ‘Ryan Doctrine,’ a doctrine against an attack on American soil.
7. The Bear and the Dragon (2000)
- Ratings: Goodreads 3.9/5, Audible 4.6/5
- Publication Date: August 1, 2000.
- Publisher: Berkley
- Language: English
- Print Length: 1028 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 741,102 copies sold
The Bear and the Dragon was written by Tom Clancy and published by Berkley on August 1, 2001. The novel details an assassination attempt by the Chinese government on the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service director, Sergey Golovko. President Jack Ryan, having acknowledged the involvement of the Chinese government in the operation, retaliated by signing Taiwan diplomatic status.
The United States further influenced the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to accept Russia, promising to back them up against the Chinese government. It became evident when there was an entrance of the Chinese forces into Siberia, and the Russian troops could resist them with the help of the United States. Due to the intense damages incurred by the Chinese Forces, the Chinese government decided to take higher war tactics to use the intercontinental ballistic missile. This was thwarted by John Clark’s special operations team, who destroyed all the missiles except two missiles. Before their intervention, the Chinese forces launched two missiles; Boeing AH-64 Apache damaged one ache while targeting the other in Washington D.C. Jack Ryan evacuated his family but decided to stay back on the Naval ship that successfully destroyed the last missile.
8. Red Rabbit (2002)
- Ratings: Goodreads 3.7/5, Audible 4.4/5
- Publication Date: August 1, 2002
- Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
- Language: English
- Print Length: 618 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,315,560 copies sold
Red Rabbit is a spy and historical fiction written by Tom Clancy. The storyline is on the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, which was instigated by Yuri Andropov, the Soviet Union director for State Security. The Soviet Union set the plan on the ground to hire Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish assassin; afterward, they will use Boris Strokov to kill Mehmet Ali Agca in order to seal the plot. This plan was also backed by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Paty of the Soviet Union. Pope John Paul II had earlier sent a letter to the Polish People’s Republic, threatening to resign as a Pope if they should continue fighting the counterrevolutionary movements in their country. A communications officer Oleg Zaitzev got the information on the plans to assassinate the Pope. He pleaded with the CIA to extract him and his family in exchange for vital information on the assassination plot against the Pope and information on KGB agents in America and Britain.
The extraction was agreed on to take place. Jack Ryan is a former CIA liaison to the British Secret Intelligence Service. The CIA later smuggled Zaitzev and his family through Yugoslavia to the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, the SIS faked the death of Zaitzev and his family by bringing in bodies that looked like every member of the Zaitzev family in the hotel they stayed in before their extraction, and the place was set ablaze to get the perfect cover needed against the KGB. After securing the safety of Zaitzev and his family, the CIA analyzed the strategies on how to carry out Pope John Paul II’s assassination. Jack Ryan was asked to head to the Vatican City to align with the British secret Intelligent Service on the ground to avert the hit. Jack Ryan was able to apprehend Strokov, but the Pope, as they didn’t kill him, sustained gunshot wounds that came from Agca. Stroke was later sentenced to death on the grounds of murdering Georgi Markov inside Britain four years ago.
9. Dead or Alive (2010)
- Ratings: Goodreads 3.8/5, Audible 4.2/5
- Publication Date: December 7, 2010.
- Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
- Language: English
- Print Length: 848 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 531,450 copies sold
Dead or Alive was written by Tom Clancy and Grant Blackwood. The novel follows a notorious terrorist known as the Emir who secretly found his way into the United States. Saif Rahman Yasin is the leader of a terrorist group known as Umayyad Revolutionary Council but nicknamed Lotus.
Emir’s disguise in the United States gave him the avenue to properly coordinate the destruction of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository using stolen atomic waste in Russia. The campus, on a quest to find Emir, got information that he is in the United States. Jack and Clark moved to Las Vegas to stop the destruction of the Yucca nuclear waste storage facility. Emir was apprehended and interrogated using Suxamethonium chloride that caused short-term paralysis but helped get out the truth from him and the plans of the Lotus and the involvement of the Pakistani intelligence. After getting all the required information from the Emir, the campus then handed him over to the FBI for reasonable charges according to the law.
10. Locked On (2012)
- Ratings: Goodreads 4.0/5, Audible 4.4/5
- Publication Date: December 4, 2012
- Publisher: Large Print Press
- Language: English
- Print Length: 900
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,610,824 copies sold
This is a combo work of Tom Clancy and Mark Greaney, a spy fiction featuring Jack Ryan and the Campus. The campus was running an investigation on Brigadier General Riaz Rehan of the Pakistani intelligence. Among other plots to cause a war between Pakistan and India, Rehan also stole two nuclear weapons that he gave a terrorist group known as a Dagestani terrorist organization to attack Moscow. Jack Ryan is preparing for his presidential campaign, in which the abduction of the Emir was about to be used against him by the opposition party headed by Ed Kealty. The opposition party raised a lot of harmful operations that will affect the presidency of Jack Ryan in the forthcoming election. These facts also affected Campus commander John Clark, who was ordered to hunt down the FBI.
On a continuous investigation on the activities of Rehan in Pakistan, Sm Driscoll was captured by Rahan’s men and was kept by Haqqani forces in a North Waziristan prison. Driscoll was later freed by Chavez, Jack Ryan Jr, and the ISI major who selected a few of his trusted friends in the Zarrar battalion commandos. At the end of all conspiracy, Jack Ryan won the presidential election, which led to the arrest of Alden. It was later discovered Jack Ryan jr’s girlfriend to be the mole hired by Alden to get information on the Campus and John Clark.
11. Command Authority (2013)
- Ratings: Goodreads 4.1/5, Audible 3.4/5
- Publication Date: November 18, 2013.
- Publisher: Putnam Adult
- Language: English
- Print Length: 752 Pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 892,507 copies sold
Jack Ryan is seen in his young days with the CIA as an analyst. He was on a mission intended to investigate the cause of the death of an Agent, who was following up on several banking activities at a Swiss bank. In a bid to carry out his investigative assignment, he uncovered a financial fraud linked to a Russian assassin named Zenith. Jack Ryan found it very difficult to find the killer of the agent. The storylines brought a solution to the inability of Jack Ryan.
A terrific figure and mean antagonist became the vital engine of the top secretive actions. Valeri Volodin returns to the world’s special days, where fear of Russia is seen beclouding the entire universe. President Valeri chooses a deadly means of eliminating any obstacle against him in achieving his aims. There was a link to the Russian government on the death of Jack Ryan’s friend, who a radioactive agent poisoned. Jack Ryan Jr, John Clark, with his team of well-trained warriors, are projected to stand as a defense to chaotic acts of the Russian government.
12. Full Force and Effect (2014)
- Ratings: Goodreads 4.2/5, Audible 4.6/5
- Publication Date: December 2, 2014.
- Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons; 1st edition
- Language: English
- Pring Length: 688 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 464,936 copies sold
Written by Mark Greaney and published on December 2, 2014, by G.P Putnam’s Sons, the storyline was centered on the North Korean president’s plot to assassinate the president of the United States of America, Jack Ryan. Choi was in a desperate quest of obtaining a nuclear weapon for North Korea, with the deadly aim of achieving world power. His plans were not approved by the U.S. government and its allies. But the North Korean president insisted and added speed to the actualization of the project. In a bid to achieve his aims, the president went to the extent of testing an intercontinental ballistic missile aimed to land in the sea of Japan located between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the Russian mainland.
President Jack Ryan later seized a cargo ship carrying parts of an intercontinental ballistic missile equivalent to the one tested last by North Korea. This made President Choi and his Generals explore plans of assassinating President Jack Ryan. The North Korean president hired Adel Zarif, an Iranian bombmaker and Maldonado cartel member. The assassination attempt failed, and Jack Ryan was injured in the process. General Ri decided to eliminate Zarif to cover the assassination plot linking North Korea, but Zarif escaped. General Ri channeled the duty to Roblas, who ordered Edward Riley, one of his best killers for Sharps, to carry out the killing of Zarif. The campus was then linked as they were tracking down all the activities of Sharps and his men with the North Korean government. They saved Zarif, which cost the campus the life of their operator Sam Driscoll.
13. True Faith and Allegiance (2016)
- Ratings: Goodreads 4.3/5, Audible 4.7/5
- Publication Date: December 6, 2016.
- Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
- Language: English
- Print Length: 752 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 66,333 copies sold
Dalca, a Romanian hacker, is seen in a middle of a vast, complicated terrorist situation that involved the killing of the United States military intelligence officers. This attack was made possible because of the Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Process (e-QIP), a document that houses confidential information about United States Intelligence officers all over the world. The Chinese employed Dalca to get hold of data on the U.S. spies in China. The information about the device got to Sami bin Rashid, who intends to string anger from the United States government through attacks. Rashid contacted Abu Musa al Matari of ISIS to fashion out an attack strategy on United States intelligence personnel.
During these attacks, the U.S. intelligence team pressured President Jack Ryan to take action. Still, he decided to take his time to make his investigations, which confirmed that the attack came from the information retrieved by Dalca. Jack Ryan immediately deployed the campus to locate Dalca. The Chinese government observed that Dalca sold the data to a terrorist group and sent assassins after Dalca. Still, he escaped and coincidentally got in a gun battle with the campus. The campus was able to defeat the men, but Dalca was nowhere around the scene. Dalca was later arrested at the airport as he was about to leave the country. In a bid to capture Al Matari of the ISIS, Ryan presented himself as bait in an abandoned cabin at Maryland forest. The ISIS leader immediately bought the trick and was arrested, and all his men were killed. Bin Rashid, the mastermind behind the attack, was killed in an airstrike as he was about to leave Australia.
14. Tom Clancy’s Code of Honor (2019)
- Ratings: Goodreads 4.2/5, Audible 4.7/5
- Publication Date: November 19, 2019.
- Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
- Language: English
- Print Length: 512 Pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 47,710 copies sold
Code of Honor is a book written by Marc Cameron. The storyline is on a Software called Calliope, which Goff Nanook develops. The software has the capacity of threats to the United States Military Computer Systems. Goff sold the software to an Indonesian gaming company. Zhao, an assassin working for the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army, cyber warfare division, was able to get a copy of the software intending to hack into the computer database of the United States. Goff escaped from the siege set for him by Zhao and sorted for refuge with Jesuit priest Pat West. It became unfortunate for the two as Zhao caught up with them and killed Goff, framing Pat West on the grounds that he was raising blasphemy against Islam. Pat West, being a former CIA agent, managed to send a message to his old-time friend, President Jack Ryan.
Jack Ryan didn’t waste additional time investigating the message from Pat West as he swung into action by ordering the campus to follow up on the information. The campus traced the info down to Goff’s colleague Nodd Ackerman, who hides in New Zealand. Unfortunately for the campus, he was murdered by the Chinese people’s Liberation Army agents. The campus further advanced to the superman games headquarters in Indonesia to retrieve the purchased copy of the software. Still, one of the operatives of the campus was abducted by Superman’s security guards. After the unsuccessful use of the Calliope on the American military communication systems.
15. Tom Clancy’s Shadow of the Dragon (2020)
- Ratings: Goodreads 4.2/5, Audible 4.6/5
- Publication Date: November 12, 2020.
- Publisher: G.P. Putman’s Sons
- Language: English
- Print Length: 512 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 217,689 copies sold
The story in this book is centered on two different events, which altogether has a final link of protecting a naval technological intelligence bestowed on Liu Wangshu. It all started when an unknown sensitive audio sound was discovered to be moving under the Arctic Ocean by a sonar operator. It was very difficult for the operator to identify it as it is way out of the standard sound expected by the operators to know the following action to take.
The disappearance of Liu Wangshu posed a grave threat to the Chinese Ministry of State Security intelligence. Now, the Chinese are ready to do anything to secure the information from getting into the wrong hands. The mission by a Chinese secret agent codenamed Surveyor to penetrate the American intelligence posed a significant problem to the security of the United States. President Jack Ryan had no other choice but to use Jack Clark, the only trusted agent and his team. A mission that seeks to find Liu Wangshu old student whom the United States feels will link to the professor’s current location.
Order of Jack Ryan’s Best Books
The books mentioned above are arranged according to their publication date, using the series that featured Jack Ryan. Even though the books appear to be in a stand-alone form, they still feature the same fictional character and most times link to each other. In some publications, the reading order is based on the best-sold books of Jack Ryan. Still, for better clarity, readers who are interested in following up on Tom Clancy’s fictional character should take a reading order according to the date of publication of books featuring Jack Ryan.
- The Hunt for Red October
- Patriot Game
- The Cardinal of the Kremlin
- Clear And Present Danger
- Debt of Honor
- Executive Orders
- The Bear and the Dragon
- Red Rabbit
- Dead or Alive
- Locked On
- Command Authority
- Full Force And Effect
- True Faith and Allegiance
- Tom Clancy’s Code of Honor
- Tom Clancy’s Shadow of the Dragon
