The Sum of all Fears (published in 1991) - Thermo-nuclear blast, authored by Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy was a bestseller author, who wrote with great authority on the military and on intelligence matters. However, even though he wrote expertly and with great detail on the matters that he wrote about, his books were not boring. Imagine a detailed description of how a hydrogen (thermonuclear) bomb works, imagine it written out in a novel, and imagine how scared you can be of the prospect that a physicist, with access to a core of plutonium, and without the support of a nation state, can construct a huge weapon that has the potential to destroy a city and also bring the major powers to war with each other. The detailed description of how a hydrogen bomb, with its fission and fusion steps, almost seems out of a physics book without the technical jargon that would be there in a textbook.
The book is the 5th in the series of books that had Jack Ryan as the character, and here he is in a senior position in the CIA, but unfortunately not on good terms with the National Security Advisor (Liz Elliott) because of some ego issues. Unfortunately for Ryan, this carries a lot of weight, because normally the NSA carries a lot of weight, but in this case, since the NSA is also having an affair with the President, it carries even more importance. By this time, Ryan is also well know within Congress since he was intimately involved with the going-ons in the previous book, Clear and Present Danger, which forced the moving aside of the then President and the coming into the Presidency of the current president, Robert Fowler.
The book starts with a new twist to the Israeli-Palestinian twist, whereby everybody normally knows of the public cycle of rock-throwing and retaliation, which can result in deaths, but don't cause any moral issues on a wide scale. However, the book takes a new tactic by the Palestinians, where they oppose the Israeli army through non-violent means, and are viciously attacked by a slightly deranged Israeli army commander. This sight, on view on TV screens, forces a changeover in the morality, since nobody can defend this action of killing peaceful protesters who were not attacking them. Israel stands on the verge of being isolated, and although this isolation has happened, a change in attitude in the US could be very significant.

A quick plan, started by Jack Ryan, goes through the various stakeholders including the Vatican, the Saudis, the Russians, and a potential peace is declared in the troubled areas of the Middle East, where a troika of different religious leaders administer the region. This causes havoc in the minds of terrorists, since the confrontation is their life blood, and they join forces with a German terrorist who was also finding safe sanctuary missing with the meltdown of the communist worlds of eastern Europe. This would not mean anything, but they have found a lost Israeli bomb in the Golan Heights, and that is seen as the basis for building a powerful bomb, that combined with other actions, will make it seem that this was done by the Russians and provoke a massive confrontation.
With the bomb having been made, it is sought to be exploded in Denver when the Super Bowl is happening, which would devastate the city and also take out senior administration officials who were there to take part in the game. Combine this with an attack supposedly by the Russians in Berlin on American forces, and a weakened and traumatized President, not getting good counsel, and the situation rapidly escalates. The Russians are blamed, and they are shocked to find that they are being blamed, with a battle happening in Berlin and some of their aircraft getting downed without warning near Libya. But if threatened, they have the potential to kill back in equal number. Ryan is getting some good intelligence, but will the President listen in time ? A gripping, although seemingly unrealistic novel.