Tom Clancy: Oath of Office

Cameron’s so-so second contribution to Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan franchise (after 2017’s Tom Clancy: Power and Empire) centers on an insurgency movement in Iran. Erik Dovzhenko, a reluctant Russian spy stationed in Tehran, chooses to defect when his dissident lover, Maryam Farhad, is killed by Revolutionary Guards. Erik escapes to Afghanistan to warn Maryam’s friend Ysabel Kashani, who in turn contacts her former lover, Jack Ryan Jr., the U.S. president’s son. Jack Jr. travels to Iran, where he meets Erik and Ysabel—and seeks to intercept two hijacked Russian nuclear missiles, which he and his compatriots from the Campus, a covert antiterrorism organization, have been tracking. The main action builds to an extremely clever twist. Meanwhile, in random interludes, President Ryan deals with an attack on the American embassy in Cameroon and the attempted assassination of a political rival. Maybe, once Ryan has finished his term in office and can do more than sit resolute behind a desk, he will again excite readers. Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, WME. (Nov.)