Without Remorse (John Clark, #1; Jack Ryan Universe Publication Order, #6) by Tom Clancy

Without Remorse (John Clark, #1; Jack Ryan Universe Publication Order, #6) Reviews

• 
  Igor Ljubuncic

  This book is good for three reasons. One, it's not a Jack Ryan story. It tells us how John Clark came into being, who he is and what he is, and the plot actually happens roughly 15-20 years before the main series.
  
  Two, Vietnam, so it's low tech and gritty Ramboism.
  
  Three, Tom Clancy normally wrote Puritan Republican-voting cardboard emotions for his characters with the full knowledge that they would be portrayed in the cinema, so it must look good. But here, he went the distance with John and actually gave him something of a semblance of a real personality, and it's one of his more engaging works.
  
  All combined, it's a very decent, classic thriller, and you will like for a bunch of reasons, especially since John is sort of an anti-hero, and there are several unique, old era elements in the book, which make for a very refreshing departure from Tom's highly dense and detailed military flavored writing.
  
  Now, we limerick:
  
  John met a girl with no name,
  After her death, a vigilante became,
  Vengeance he sought,
  In Vietnam fought,
  Delta Force operatives get no fame.
  
  Cheers,
  Igor
• 
  Stephen

  5.0 Stars. Absolutely superb novel focusing on the enigmatic John Clark who is one of best, if not the best, spy novel characters ever. This is one of my favorite Tom Clancy novels despite being a much "smaller" scale story. Highly Recommended!!!!
• 
  C

  This book was...well, ok. It wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't as good as I'd hoped, given Clancy's success.
  
  First gripe: There were FAR too many side plots, which I know where there in some attempt to round out the narrative, to show how things happen, but it just got distracting. Stupidly so at times.
  
  Second gripe: What the hell was Clancy thinking when he started calling people by different names? Sometimes a character is referred to by his first name, sometimes by his last, sometimes by his title. Note to writers: In exposition, call characters by ONE NAME. It's irritating as hell to have a character introduced and then have to trace him back because in one pages you've got two or even three names for the same person.
  
  Last gripe (not quite but almost a SPOILER): Kelly was pretty frickin' dumb to get caught unaware in the beginning. What an idiot. I almost stopped reading there.
  
  I'm giving Rainbox Six a try, but I doubt I'll go past that...
• 
  Tim Greaton

  So bad yet so good...
  
  Tom Clancy has long been a hit and miss author for me. I should say that a lot of it has to do with his incredibly detailed and dense descriptions of everything military. He earns a lot of kudos for his intense knowledge of his subject matter and his ability to base his fiction in frighteningly realistic circumstances, but there are times when I just want to get on with the story and not learn about a firing pin and its historical significance to military maneuvers in the east pacific along the way.
  
  However, Without Remorse is a book so deeply drenched in character building that it swallowed me up with sympathy, empathy, and then a deep personal need to see Mr. Clark succeed in finding revenge and yes "justice" for the many wrongs that had been done to him and his. I, like many of us, had met Mr. Clark in other Clancy tales, where he was a cool and efficient military liaison to our government. But within the pages of Without Remorse, Tom Clancy brings him to life. Mr. Clark is soon revealed as a man with a history filled with flaws that maybe forgivable but are nonetheless frightening.
  
  Back when he was called Kelly, Mr. Clark endured the loss of a wife and then another woman who was very important to him. Unfortunately for the men responsible, he wasn't prepared to accept that second loss. A man with hard-earned military skills, Kelly/Clark moves, no sweeps, through this story and leaves us with a sense of nobility as he deals with some of the most revolting segments of our society.
  Is vigilante justice right? And can a man with the skills earned through U.S. military Special Forces actually beat law enforcement? The answers to those questions are sure to surprise you. But please don't assume this novel is about revenge, because it's not. It's really about how a man changes in the face of severe personal adversity, and about how even the most righteous of causes can somehow get all twisted up.
  
  All these big issues aside, rest assured Mr. Clark is a man worth meeting and spending time with. His story isn't an easy one, but I, for one, would be pleased to learn that men like him are standing watch all around our world today.
  
  from "Maine's Author Author"(TM) Tim Greaton
• 
  RM(Alwaysdaddygirl)

  4 stars.
  🇺🇸🤙
• 
  Mike (the Paladin)

  This is our first meeting with John Clark...if you follow Clansy's novels that tells you the back ground on this one.
  
  This novel is quite a bit more violent than some of Clancy's other works (that's saying something I know) but that will hold true for the Clark centered novels in the series.
  
  You get fast moving adventure with slightly less of the political twists you get when the books are about "Jack". This is an intense read.
• 
  Henri Moreaux

  What a fantastic book. Having seen Hunt For Red October/Patriot Games/Sum of all Fears at the movies and finding them to be good movies I thought I'd try out the actual books. Hating to start in the middle of a series I decided if I'm going to read a Tom Clancy book I might as well start at the beginning and enjoy them all (assuming they're any good) and boy am I glad I did!
  
  This book isn't what I expected - I thought it'ld be more action, shooting and explosions with little substance, but no there's a great deal of substance to this book and the writing style is easy to read yet very detailed and atmospheric. (There's action, shooting and explosions, but not mindlessly).
  
  The story at a basic level is one of revenge, a man (John Kelly) who has previously lost his wife meets a young lady (Pam), it turns out Pam has been the victim of abuse, John Kelly falls in love with Pam and helping her recover and in doing so opens his heart for the first time since the death of his wife and is crushed when Pam is then murdered by her past abusers.
  
  Enter John-the-serial-killer who seeks revenge on those who took his Pam from him. Amongst this there are a couple of other sub plots as well as the second main thrust of the story line which is John Kelly returning to Vietnam as well as being recruited by the CIA.
  
  It really was quite the moving story and you couldn't help but sympathise with John Kelly even as he killed again and again.
• 
  Tim

  The beginning was slow and mildly interesting. The end is well-done and elevates the rating. 5 of 10 stars
• 
  Lena

  
  John Clark was never a boy scout. Half of the book is layered Clancy geopolitical games but the rest is down and dirty. Be prepared to hit the streets with an ex Navy Seal hell bent on revenge!
  
  But it was way too long for five stars. And there was way too much of...
  
  Overall, I prefer John Clark to Jack Ryan.
• 
  Silvana

  One of the worst Clancy's books I've ever read. Boring, too much description, too many unnecessary drama... Yes, I know it's about the "making" of the legendary John Clark, but I still cannot enjoy it.
• 
  Kashif

  Without Remorse was my first true Tom Clancy thriller and I was absolutely blown away by how excellent it is. Even reading it in 2020, it hasn’t lost its step one bit.
  
  Without Remorse is a chilling and dark story of abuse and vengeance, packed with an intriguing and brilliant narrative as well as fast paced and realistic action. This is the origin story of John Clark, in another life. John Clark, a former Navy SEAL operative in the Vietnam war, is no stranger to pain. But there’s a limit to what a man can endure. When Clark is faced with a brutal tragedy, he takes matters into his own hands and goes on a path of violent retribution.
  
  I found Clark to be a really interesting character from the get-go. I was amazed by how human he felt as a character. His thoughts, his emotions, all so vulnerable. This really helped to invest me further into the events of the book, and every brutal tragedy hit me twice as hard. Every single character in the book felt like a living breathing personality instead of filler characters. Tom Clancy very aptly puts readers into the heads of the characters.
  
  The action was extremely fast paced and brutal. There is a healthy and interesting trivia of firearms and tactical equipment, which I immensely enjoyed. The mentions of creating and fitting custom suppressors particularly drew my attention. The incorporation of the realistic tactical systems helped to give Without Remorse the rightful vibe of a professional eliminating evil individuals.
  
  Without Remorse seems like an inspiration for many thrillers nowadays and it is not hard to see why. It is a classic thriller that will stand the test of time no matter what. It doesn’t hold back punches and it’s grounded in real characters and realistic circumstances. Another brilliant aspect of the book was how multiple storylines were woven together so brilliantly, incorporating both Vietnam and US locales without overwhelming the readers. If anything, it just added to the fast pace of the thriller. It starts a bit slow, but that is worth building the foundation of the book. Tom Clancy’s influences will always stay with the thriller genre.
• 
  Neil

  Tom Clancy was the Steven Seagal of writers
• 
  ♥Milica♥

  'I have to take you in, you know.'
  'What for?' .
  'For murder, Mr Kelly.'
  'No.' Kelly shook his head. 'It's only murder when innocent people die.'
  
  John Clark lost his wife one year prior to the start of the story, and is still grieving her loss, when he picks up a hitchhiker named Pam who turns his world around. They fall in love fast, and almost just as fast she's taken away from him, by the very people she was running from in the first place. Now John has to hunt down those that hurt her and nothing (and no one) will stand in his way.
  
  I love a good revenge trope, and what I love even more is an anti-hero character, like John here. I couldn't help but like him from the get-go, something about him is just so likable.
  
  There was one scene near the start where I didn't like him for a few seconds, when he said he never thought about young sex workers, how they might not like their jobs. I was like "really John?" but then I remembered this is set in the early 70s, he's a man AND in the military at that, so what was I expecting?
  
  He quickly remedied that though, by being embarrassed that he never thought about what life was like for them, and that made me warm up to him again.
  
  Now the problem with this book is that the first 200 or so pages were fun, but a good chunk of the rest was a bit of a slog to get through. The ending was brilliant though, and it made me cry. So I'm settling on three stars for this, maybe if I reread it in the future the rating will change.
• 
  Thomas Stroemquist

  Another 'prequel' in the series (there were to be even more). This one went way back to tell us where John Clark comes from. Long and not so engaging. And John Clarke is not a sympathetic character. Did not care much for this one, but of course worse were to come...
• 
  Jake C.

  All I need to say Is John Kelly is a BAD ASS! This was my first Tom Clancy book and won't be the last, I read this book because my friends have talked about how great of a writer Tom Clancy is. So I took a look at some of his books. And to be honest at first I did judge his books by their covers, because there was always some sort of gun or weapon on the cover. So I figured he would be the Michael Bay of literature, all explosions, a weak plot, and characters without any depth. But I was pleasantly surprised! Although the book may have been slow at points it was a great book. I did feel like some of the parts like Colonel Zacharias were rushed in the end. But overall this book was exciting and unpredictable! I strongly recommend this book.
• 
  William

  Started with audio and then found that I could not tell when scene and character changed. I pulled a hard copy off the to-read shelf and had a great experience. I remember the time frame of the story and understand the military, the drug situation as presented.
  I recommend this to people on both ends of political spectrum....Nixon is president after the LBJ admins. complete cockup in South East Asia totally destroyed the political power of centrists and conservative Democrats.
• 
  Heaven Yassine

  Ce livre est a recommandé au fan d'Octobre Rouge et du Cardinal du Kremlin , il présente la vie d'un second rôle John Clark , ex SEAL devenu tueur pour la CIA ...il n'y a pas de concessions , c 'est violent , mais justifié.
  
  5/5
• 
  هادی امینی

  عالی بود! عالی. واقعا نمیتونم ایرادی بهش بگیرم. همه جنبه های یک کتاب خوب رو داشت. هم اکشن، هم هیجان، هم اطلاعات دقیق، هم روابط انسانی و احساسی عالی، هم معما گونه‌ای ، تا حدی هم پلیسی.
  
• 
  Justin Poe

  As I'm finishing up the book here, I decided to start writing my review. This is only my second Tom Clancy book. I read "Executive Orders" the year it came out...so a while back. I decided to start with book 1 in the Jack Ryan series (yes, he's mentioned briefly in this book).
  
  This book focuses on the early life of John Kelly (John Clark), a legend in the Jack Ryan series. I remember his character in the movie "Clear and Present Danger", played by William Dafoe. Let me be clear. This was a good book. I gave it 2 stars, almost 3. The reason being is the book started off on such an atrocious note that I could hardly get past the first 7 chapters. It was that bad.
  
  The story starts off with John Kelly (ex Vietnam Navy SEAL), driving to his boat when he picks up a random, yes random, chick hitchhiking on the side of the road. Not only is this girl young and fairly attractive, she's also a completely drug dependent prostitute. Within 24 hours these two are in complete love with each other and have a life planned ahead. Now, in the real world, this is nonsense. This Pam Madden girl would have robbed him blind on the first night and been right back on the street doing dope and turning tricks...that's real world folks. Quickly, Kelly finds a doctor and his wife that nurse Pam off the drugs and get her cleaned up and presentable and all looks to be hunky dory for our guy Kelly and his new love, Pam. Mind you, Kelly is also 6 months removed from his pregnant wife Tisha having been killed in an auto accident. Also killed was their unborn baby. Geeez, what luck. Almost put the book down at this point. Just not believable in the real world. Then the book got better.
  
  After Pam is cleaned up, Kelly gets the bright idea (or not so bright, especially for a SEAL) to take Pam back to the city and scope out who the guys are that hooked her onto drugs and basically held her as a sex slave. While driving through the "hood", Pam is spotted by one of the main players on the street. This is significant because already another girl wound up dead when she tried to escape. The drug dealers can't afford to let any girl escape because they have been witnesses to various crimes, including murder. A car pursuit enues and Kelly appears to get away but he makes a fatal mistake. Pam is taken from the car and later found brutally murdered (another good grief) and Kelly (a former SEAL mind you), is shot by a low level street thug with a shotgun.
  
  Kelly survives the assault and is treated by the same doctor, Dr. Rosen, who helped with Pam. Also a nurse named Sandy O'Toole makes her appearance (and later marries Kelly....what's with this guy and instant love?????) and also helps Kelly. Kelly at this point has nothing but revenge on his mind and gets to work, going on a mass killing spree in the city, ridding the streets of money, drugs, and drug dealers.
  
  At the same time, the story gets a little confusing with 2-3 other sub stories going on (more like 4-5). The Vietnam War and a rescue attempt of POWS, a POW/Russian colonel relationship (not sexual mind you) in the camp, a crooked cop in with the drug dealers, a leak in the NSA (or whatever the equivalent was in the late '60s)that blows the rescue operation, ect, ect, ect. I'm not going to go into details into these parts of the story.
  
  Clancy leaves the reader to decide on the moral conundrum that Kelly presents. Is he right to kill truly bad people??? Is it any different then war??? Is revenge ok given the end result is good?? Clancy never answers the question, although the book clearly leans to approval of the hero. The book is very brutal. Clancy pulls no punches in the descriptions of abuse for the girls involved in the drug ring. Vivid descriptions of the torture Kelly puts some of these guys through even made me nauseous, which isn't easy to do.
  
  I liked the book. It's a classic example of revenge along the lines of "Man on Fire", "Taken", ect. I wanted to give it 3 or 4 stars and in fact the last 3/4 of the book are worthy of that...but again, the first 7 chapters almost ruined the whole story. Looking forward to Patriot Games next.
  
  
• 
  Matthew Esham

  Kelly is a Navy Seal back in the states as Vietnam rages half way across the globe. He's done his service, and well, and is now working as an underwater demolitions expert.
  
  Of course, that all changes when his pregnant wife is accidentally killed. Several months pass. Then on a wimhe picks up a female hitch hiker while he is on the way to his boat. (he lives on an island somewhere off the coast of MD that used to be a military site).
  
  The hitch hiker has a horrendous past, she's running from some very bad people, and is addicted to drugs. That is where the book really takes off.
  
  ***Spoiler Alert***
  The good...
  -Kelly is a very likable character. He's tough, but the very same things that make him so resiliant also show his humanity.
  -The love story between Kelly and Pam is very sweet. There is something touching about the two of them finding each other.
  
  The bad...
  -Pam dies. That sucked. I like happy endings.
  -The way that Pam dies. The retelling of that tale is just to brutal. I actually debated about giving the book a lower rating because I found it disturbing. But then I argued with myself that if it was giving my nightmares, I guess it was effective.
  -The cross story about the POW's and how they were off the books was interesting, but I think it could have been done quicker. It was a lot of subplot for what I felt was little return. Kelly needed the out at the end, but I don't think the story needed that much detail to make it happen.
  -In the end, Henry got it too quick. He should have been the one in the high pressure chamber.
  
  A very good read, and the overall happy ending with Nurse O'Toole in the end was a nice touch. I liked that Kelly was at peace by the last page. And while Jack Ryan is just barely in this book, it is considered the first in the series. Looking forward to reading the next one, although I think Kelly becomes a side character from here on in.
• 
  Rob

  Executive Summary: I found this book good at times, and tedious at others. It rounded out to be a so-so thriller overall.
  
  Audiobook: Much like the other Clancy books he's narrated, Michael Prichard does a fine job, but nothing spectacular. He speaks clearly and with good volume. He doesn't add anything extra to the story nor does he detract from it. Audio is a decent option here.
  
  Full Review
  This book is largely split into two parts: Military/CIA thriller, and domestic vigilante action crime drama. I much preferred the former to the latter.
  
  The beginning of this book was a drag. I guess it was meant to give you sympathy to John Clark's one-man crusade, but I mostly just found it soured me on the whole subplot. I guess it's important to explaining how John Kelly became John Clark, but if anything it made me less interested in his origin story.
  
  The parts of this book I enjoyed most were the parts where John was acting as John Clark. The planning and execution of a dangerous and daring mission where his expertise is the make or break point for success or failure. That was what I picked this book up for.
  
  Part of my issue may be the timing. I had just finished another Tom Clancy book not that long ago, and probably wasn't ready for a second so soon, but my hold came in from the library so I decided to go ahead anyways.
  
  At this point, I'll be taking a break from Clancy for awhile. We'll see if I'm the mood again in a few months.
• 
  Jane

  I read this back when it was first published. As a Clancy fan I was up to date until Rainbow Six,then the novels started going off in all directions with collaborations and I lost track and although I've bought more of Tom's books I can't stand reading a series out of order. But if you're a fan and you know where I'm up to you'll understand when I say nigh twenty years after reading it is the most memorable of all his novels. For its unswerving violence in the name of revenge. I'd recommend this book in a heart beat. It's as good a stand alone book as Tom ever produced.
• 
  David Thomas

  Without Merit
• 
  Brent

  I hadn't read a Tom Clancy novel actually written by him (and not another author under his brand) since probably I was in college. I really liked them back then, but my tastes have changed and expanded somewhat so I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy Without Remorse even though it's been on my radar to read for 20 years. I recently just watched the Amazon Prime adaptation with Michael B. Jordan and honestly it sucked so I assumed the book had to be better. It was time to give it a go.
  
  The bare bones here is that this is a revenge tale and origin story for one of Clancy's most beloved characters (and my personal favorite) John Clark. The story starts with former Navy SEAL, John Kelly, doing some maritime demolition and salvage work when his young pregnant wife is killed in a car accident. This threw me for a bit of a loop because I assumed the revenge tale would be about her murder. You find out so early on that it is not it can't really be considered a spoiler. The story starts in earnest when Kelly falls quickly in love with a woman named Pam who has problems and is clearly running away from something. This eventually leads Kelly down a very dark path seeking justice outside the law.
  
  Of course there is a lot more too it than that which I omitted due to spoilers, but honestly the biggest flaw of this book is how much Clancy should have omitted as well. The revenge arc here is quite solid even if some things about it feel a bit weird. Kelly and Pam's relationship feels a lot like instalove. Clancy isn't a strong enough writer of relationships to make this work and base a whole revenge plot around it. That being said it's still a really fun revenge plot that carries the book. The real problem is that Clancy introduces 2 or 3 other side plots that make the book really jump around from pov to pov and location to location sometimes within the same chapter. It just makes it feel very uneven. What could have been a really focused 350 page revenge thriller turns into a 750 page revenge thriller with drug smuggling, crime investigation, Vietnam POWs and a rescue operation, and Cold War espionage.
  
  That being said I still mostly enjoyed reading about all of those plots even though it did feel a bit jumbled. Ultimately what really shined here though is really building Mr. Clark's backstory. I've read many novels in the Ryanverse where he played a significant role, and it was fun to see how he became what he is. Also, I'm always going to have a good time when a story has someone going John Wick all over the dregs of humanity. Clancy was doing John Wick 20 years before John Wick was a thing.
  
  All in all I really enjoyed this book. This is a book you read for the action and plot. The prose and characters are nothing to write home about. They are clinical, technical, and ultimately serviceable to tell the intended story. If you are a Clancy fan, but have been skipping this one and sticking to the Jack Ryan novels (he does not make an appearance here) I would recommend you pick this one up.
  
• 
  Kon R.

  I'm torn between a 3 or a 4, but decided to go with the former. The story had so many layers all going on at the same time, which some may find overwhelming, but I enjoyed seeing it all come together by the end. With such an unbelievable plot it doesn't surprise me that the ending felt forced and a bit too clean considering the complexities involved. Clancy loves to stretch a yarn to breaking point and this book was riddled with that. I honestly didn't need to know every thought and line of reason each character was thinking. Leave something for the reader's deduction or imagination. There were many action-packed sequences and the story didn't seem to sag in any point, but it did feel unnecessarily long winded.
• 
  Marty Fried

  I used to love Tom Clancy before he went over the top pushing his anti-liberal agenda. This book was written back before he got too preachy, or at least before it was noticeable.
  
  I enjoyed this book very much. I really like the John Kelly/Clark character, and so it was nice to learn a lot more about him and his background. He reminds me a little of Jack Reacher, the Lee Child character that I also enjoy.
  
  Anyway, I won't waste time on what the book is about - that's easy enough to find out. I'll just say that if you like Tom Clancy, you'll like this book. And if you've never read Tom Clancy, you're missing out on some good reading.
• 
  Natt Cham

  ดุเดือดเผ็ดมันส์ไปกลับจุดกำเนิดของ คล้ากยอดนักบู๊ ในซีรี่ย์นี้
  
  จากทหารหน่วยซีลปลดประจำการ เมื่อความผิดพลาดของเขาทำให้สูญเสียคนรักไปกับอาชญากรยาเสพติดที่แม้แต่เขาเองเกือบจะไม่รอด. ความทารุณที่พวกมันทำให้เขาเจ็บปวดทิ้งรอยความแค้นให้เขาตามลบ กระนั้นเขาก็ยังมีภารกิจของชาติที่ถูกเรียกกลับไปรับใช้. ความผิดพลาดนั้นทำให้เขาสุขุม รอบคอบ เยือกเย็น อำมหิต และเด็ดขาด
  
  ประหนึ่งได้ดูภาพยนตร์แอคชั่นระดับฮอลลีวู้ดสองเรื่องในเล่มเดียว. ทั้งในเรื่องการล่าล้างรอยแค้น. และภาระกิจการช่วยเหลือเชลยสงครามทีตกค้างในดินแดนศัตรู
  
  ปล. นอกจากจะเป็นการรีครูทคล้ากแล้ว แจ็ค ไรอัน ก็มีมาเข้าฉากเล็กๆ ในตอนท้าย
• 
  itchy

  another awesome reread from clancy, but then i knew that all along;
  my kind of feel-good story
  
  5 pips then, 5 pips now
  
  *
  
  24june2019
  
  first read a borrowed copy from the tampus family library back in the day (was it high school?)
• 
  Brett

  It's easy enough to allow yourself to slip into a mindless passive approval as John Clark--the main character in this book--methodically murders his way up the chain of command of a drug syndicate. As a reader, you sense that while Clancy never comes right out and says it, that you should feel these bad guys are getting what they deserve. But if you're a thinking human, it's awfully difficult to put the book down and not have it occur to you that Clark's enterprise is completely morally bankrupt. Clancy pairs this story with the other plotline of the book, which involves the the moral ambiguity of the Vietnam War, evidently wanting readers to come to the conclusion that Clark's actions in Vietnam and his actions in Baltimore are comparable. Clancy is raising a whole nest of questions that he is unable to answer because of his suffocating nationalism, though somehow I don't think that was his intention with this book.
  
  In one sense, this is an easier book than other Clancy novels, because there is no overt political manuevering. On the other hand, the "realist" geopolitical vision he subscribes to is sometimes one of the more interesting features of his books, even when you disagree with him, as I almost always do. Also, there is little application of Clancy's encylopedic knowledge of military weaponry and tactics, since most of this novel is focused on Clark's personal crusade.
  
  I have been the victim of violent crime a couple of times in my life, and I'd be kidding myself if I didn't say that I sometimes don't entertain revenge fantasies. But that's why we have a legal system (as if you need me to point this out). It's too difficult to keep up the enthusiasm for Clark's killing spree for the length of this novel, especially as it's paired with a distict lack of introspection. You'll save yourself a lot of time if you watch the Punisher movie instead, and have about the same level of satisfaction when all is said and done.