Jeff Rovin. Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: The Black Order. St. Martin’s, 2021.

As readers of this blog may know, we have been fans of Tom Clancy since the eighties. We have still kept up with the “Clancy” novels written under the auspices of his estate since he passed away.

The Op-Center novels are different. While Clancy may have inspired them and co-authored a few, they are really a product of his hired writers and, now, his estate. They are still entertaining stories, but reading The Black Order felt like Clancy lite.

Most of the “classic” Jack Ryan and Jack Ryan, Jr., tales are international. With few exceptions, even when they are set in the United States, they involve foreign activity, whether a hostile government, terrorists, or organized criminals. The Op-Center is a branch of Naval Intelligence that is given a certain amount of free reign like the Campus of the more recent Jack Ryan stories.

The Black Order reminded this reviewer of The Wilkes Insurrection. Both stories involve what appear to be random acts of terror by Americans on Americans in America. The perpetrator in The Wilkes Insurrection used Islamic jihadist language but may have been an anarchist who used Islamic activists to do his dirty work.

The Black Order is a secret group also organized by an American who specializes in computer technology and networks. However, what is perhaps interesting about the CEO of Stroud Safe at Home is that he at least claims to believe that American values are worth preserving—he pretty much believes the same things that the Navy and Marine Corps member of the Op-Center believe. The difference is that Mr. Stroud thinks that the country is abandoning them and needs to be shocked back.

Stroud is clever. His workers are dedicated. Terrorist attacks happen in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Why those places? To be reminded of our roots and how they are being undermined. Without going into too much detail, his awful attack on the Philadelphia Navy Yard is really quite ingenious. Like certain cartoon villains, this may ultimately be his downfall: He thinks he is smarter than nearly everyone else.

A retired Navy Admiral is murdered in front of his wife. The disguised murderer tells his wife that war has begun. The retired admiral seems like a strange victim. He still consults with the Navy, but spends a lot of his time in the woods of western Pennsylvania collecting deer from hunters so he can deliver the venison to needy veterans.

It seems that Navy connections might be singled out, but then a random killing of owners of an ice cream stand and the bombing of a hotel in Atlanta follow. What is the “war” about? Why such targets?

Sometimes the old Clancy novels seemed prescient. Whether The Black Order is remains to be seen. We know now that the American military will resort to distant operations using automated means like drones. What if someone who knows about commercial security systems decides to go rogue? What might happen?

This reader feels he has come to know the Ryan family (Jack, Dr. Ryan, Jack, Jr.), Ding Chavez, John Clark, and other actors form the CIA and the Campus in the main Clancy novels. I have to ask myself if I am ready to get to know or even care about the actors in the Op-Center. That remains to be seen.