Finished (E-Reader) - "Under Fire" - Tom Clancy (written by Grant Blackwood)

I've been a big Clancy fan (the Jack Ryan series anyway) for a long time.  I've liked the "insider" feeling of the stories - I know (kinda') what it feels like to be in a nuclear submarine from "Hunt for Red October" and understand the motivations for both the defecting Soviet crew and the Americans.  I got a feel for the world of espionage from "Cardinal of the Kremlin", and doses of action from a number of different sources.
It seemed that post-911 the novels became a little more one-sided - there didn't seem to be an attempt to understand the motivation(s) of the terrorists that showed up in the books - not that you had to agree, or that the motivations had to be legitimate to an impartial observer, but the books seemed to lose something when the villains became stereotypic.

Unfortunately, Tom Clancy died in 2013, though his books exist in various series being written by partners.

As Clancy's Jack Ryan series was a serial story - each story referenced earlier stories and the characters had a consistent history - he ran into the same problem facing comic-books - what do you do with an "old" spy?  Clancy handled this by having Jack (Sr.), his original character, age and progress in his career, eventually becoming VP (on paper anyway) and President.  He kept the "Jack Ryan - spy" idea going by having Ryan (Sr.)'s son Jack become an intelligence analyst and field operator as his dad had before him.
I haven't been quite as enamoured with Jr.'s stores.  The latest being "Under Fire".  The book has action, but it doesn't seem to have the heart and soul of the Jack Ryan (Sr.) books a generation before.  I haven't re-read those older books, so it may certainly be me, not Jack Ryan who's aged out of the category.

I don't find myself immersed in the intelligence underground with these Jr. books, and the "narrow escapes" seem to be too frequent, too farfetched and too lucky - it tends to make the stories a little too one-dimensional action stores, not a rich expose of clandestine activities taking place under our noses, erupting into action periodically as a result of the investigations.

Anyway, it is what it is.  If you're stuck, the book is OK, but you can probably find something else to take up your time this summer.