Reader’s Diary

Tom Clancy

The pope threatens to resign, move to Poland, and resist the Communists. The Soviets decide that the only solution is to kill the pope. A KGB officer has a fit of conscience and decides to defect in order to warn the West that the pope is in danger. He defects without trouble. The British try to save the pope’s life, but only succeed in capturing the Bulgarian who was supposed to kill the Turkish assassin.

That tension-free plot takes up 618 pages of this, Clancy’s worst book to date. Clancy’s never produced Great Literature, but he used to be able write a book that was hard to put down. This one’s hard to hold up. It’s slow, repetitious and filled with mind-numbing irrelevant details. Jack Ryan’s morning routines and his thoughts on living in England are repeated many times. A sub-plot involving Mrs. Ryan practicing medicine in England is never resolved. Evey single time a message is sent (and there are many of them), we’re treated to an explanation of how it’s coded, transmitted, what kind of car the courier drives, what route he takes, and how the message is decoded. Clancy’s writing has turned vulgar; the normally circumspect Ryan is a foul-mouthed chauvinist and even the 3rd person narration is sprinkled with gratuitous four-letter words.

It’s hard to imagine how and why Clancy produced such a flop. Is this simply an attempt to meet a contractual commitment? Is he suffering from some wasting disease? The answers to those questions would be far more interesting than the book itself.

Colleen McCullough

This is a continuation of the stories begun in “First Man in Rome“. The Italians are increasingly angry at being denied the Roman citizenship granted to inhabitants of the city. War breaks out between the Romans and Italians and political disputes over its proper resolution lead to civil war. Marius and Sulla are estranged. Sulla marches on Rome itself and Marius, suffering the effects of a stroke, leads a personal army to the city and a bloodbath ensues.

This book brings the tragedy of Marius to an end. It also introduces the young man that will be known to history as the great Caesar, but his tale is told in future volumes of McCullough’s Roman epic.

Colleen McCullough

This is a historical novel set in Rome, circa 110 B.C. The “First Man” of the title is Gaius Marius, a military genius whose ability and marriage into the Caesar family allows him to rise to the supreme political position - consul - seven times. Almost as important to the plot is Sulla, Marius’ brother-in-law and sometime assistant, a ruthless patrician whose baser instincts are in constant conflict with his iron self-control. The book centers around the rise of Marius and Sulla during the era in which the Roman senate, suited to running a city, struggled to manage a growing empire.

Despite the fact that much of the plot revolves around wars between Rome and various other peoples, this is not an action-packed adventure. It’s a political novel focusing on character and intrigue; long and detailed, somewhat slow-going but never tedious.

The book is rich in detail about ancient Rome. I read it on a trip to Italy and the extensive glossary was a great sightseeing aid.