Clear and Present Danger (Published in 1989) - Fight the drug menace, authored by Tom Clancy

Most citizens of the US would not have heard of Colombia, or if they have heard of Colombia, they would have associated it wither some great coffee, or also for being the source of a large proportion of the drugs that enter the US. These drugs enter the US through many different transport sources, and it has been the long standing wish of the US enforcement agencies to detect and block such routes in order to stop the inflow of drugs into the country. And with this drug money, the powerful drug barons in Colombia grow richer and more powerful, in many ways, being able to defy the government of Colombia as well. From time to time, there would have been the thought of many of the Presidents of the US and other high-ranking officials to take the powerful US military and intelligence agencies, and use it to hunt down these drub barons and somehow stop this inflow of drugs into the USA.
Tom Clancy has written a number of novels that go into great detail into the politics, administration, intelligence agencies and military of the US and spun novels around them. These books get into great detail and are fascinating to read as well. When you get into such detail, you also realize that the powers of the US military are not that over-whelming (they are in terms of their reach and lethal powers, but following all the rules and legal regulations ensures the constraints on possible actions of the military); Tom Clancy spins a web about the use of US military force to break the powers of the drug barons, and how this is not so easy as it sounds.




The book was published in 1989, and was a bestseller on release, and was soon made into a major movie starring Harrison Ford. The book takes a single starting point, where a friend of the President had been executed by the drug barons for stealing from them, and the President, deeming the import of drugs into the country as a 'Clear and Present Danger' to the country, decides to take action against the drug barons and their vast drug producing areas. However, in a clear indicator about the President not having unquestioned powers, this action by the President is cloaked under secrecy, with Congress not aware of this, and there being no statement by the military that they would start acting against the drug lords in a covert manner (and since this is part of the geographic territory of the country of Colombia, with which the US has had friendly relations, there cannot be an overt action of invading the country to fight against the drug barons).
A plan is setup where US troops are sent into the country, sent in through the direction of the US National Security Advisor (James Cutter) and the Deputy Director of Operations in the CIA (Robert Ritter). Jack Ryan, now a senior official in the CIA and one who also talks to Congress, is out of the loop. The plan first starts out smashingly, with flights being intercepted and troops inside Colombia. But, things start to go haywire soon. Then of course there is the attack on a visiting group of officials, including the head of the FBI and Ryan, when they are visiting Colombia.
And then the ex-Cuban guy advising one of the cartel members starts investigating further, and discovers that the US military has been blowing off bombs in the area and they have boots on the ground. And in the worse possible course of action, the Cuban, Cortez decides that he could use this attack to take over the cartel, and also blackmails Cutter to abandon the US soldiers. Ryan learns of all this and flies into Colombia to save the soldiers, acting without official authority; entering a foreign country to get your own soldiers out under hostile fire without a great plan is not exactly what most people would try to do. What happens next ? It is a masterful and thrilling tale, well worth the reading.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Written by Neil Gaiman - Published in 2013

“I liked myths. They weren’t adult stories and they weren’t children’s stories. They were better than that. They just were.”
Amid the hurried lives we lead - weddings and funerals are the punctuated pauses in between when we can recollect that which was, and how it used to be. The anonymous character we meet in the first chapter wanders away from a funeral, to a lane where he once lived, more than thirty years ago; he meanders to the end of the lane where his friend once lived, here he stops by a duck pond -
‘Lettie Hempstock’s ocean.
I remembered that, and, remembering that, I remembered everything.’
The first of the memories we encounter begin with the poignant 7th birthday party – it would ring a bell in most minds, weren’t you nervous at that age –that you’d throw a party to which no one came? However, displaying surprising maturity for a seven year old - the child never tries to find out why no one turned up –“I did not need to ask them. They were not my friends, after all. They were just the people I went to school with.”
Like some quiet reticent kids, he has books for friends, and a cat called Fluffy. They were inseparable, the cat made up for the absence of human friends in the child’s life. But one day, the young person is introduced to death by the tragic loss of Fluffy (as a child many a reader would be reminded of how he was told ‘Rover’s in doggy-heaven’). And the opal miner in check shirt and thick pale gold chain thought he would make up for the loss of the beloved feline by getting a replacement - a ginger cat called Monster. The ill tempered cat lived with the child for a week, a week in which the memory of Fluffy may have felt betrayed by the angry substitute, yet the kid stoically continues to withhold his sorrow and dismay from the world outside (‘I wanted to cry for my kitten, but I could not do that if anyone else was there and watching me.’), after all - he still had a cat!




Gaiman draws on his own (and somewhat macabre) childhood memory of the loss of his parents’ car - in the book, the child discovers the car is stolen, and when the police get it back, he rushes to retrieve his copy of SMASH! with Batman, only to find it lodged under the corpse of the man who stole the car, and chose to then die in it. Upon further discovery, he learns it was the opal miner, who left a note:
 “To all my friends,
“Am so sorry it was not like I meant to and hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me for I cannot forgive myself.”
What was that again about black cats crossing one’s path?
Despite that very disturbing turn of events, the child finds a friend, not a book or an animal - but an apple cheeked, red-brown hair, gray-blue eyed girl from Hempstock farm (which was in the great Domesday Book survey executed for William the Conqueror in 1086), who gave him warm porridge with blackberry jam, and then led him to her ‘ocean’, gave him a  sixpence coin from the gut of  a dead fish (for luck), and  memories to last a lifetime.
The opal miner’s unhappy spirit  comes to haunt the street - and since he had loved money enough to steal it from his friends - his ghost starts to haunt people with ‘money trouble’, including the young boy.
The child is elated he has a handsome twenty five pounds inheritance, and coins dug up from his garden - but he wakes up choking in the night - a silver coin lodged in his throat. Lettie all knows grandmother, who was there ‘the day the moon came’, tells him the coin is new, although the date suggests it’s older. Lettie and ‘Him’ embark on an adventure to ‘Bind it, close its ways, send it back to sleep.” It - the opal miner’s spirit.
With instructions from Lettie to never let go of her hand, and the promise that she would protect him - the two are confronted by giant worms, gray raggedy creatures with nothing in them, and when they return - something is lodged in his foot. He sits in the bathroom, tugging into the hole with a pair of tweezers, and pulls out a dark and light gray, pink-streaked worm, which he lets go in the bath plug hole.
The worm makes a comeback in the form of Ursula, the housekeeper, who takes over his entire life, endearing herself to his family, to the extent; his father almost drowns him in the bath tub as she stands by watching. Most days, he’s trying to get away from Ursula’s prying eyes, and finally he manages to escape to the Hempstock Farm-where Granny Hempstock asks Ursula to return, she of course puts up a fight, but is killed by ‘varmints’ –who then want to kill the boy, because Ursula’s heart is still lodged in his foot. Lettie though, sacrifices her life, and saves him from death.  Her mother wades into the pond, with Lettie’s limp body in her arms, and she is finally laid to rest in her watery abode.
While still leading the obscure life of a child, he finds a black kitten with ‘unusual eyes’, and names her ‘Ocean’. When he came to, in the present, the boy was left with no memory of his escapades - and believes Lettie migrated to Australia; as he sat , freshly arrived from  his trip down memory lane, old Mrs. Hempstock pays him a visit. She tells him Lettie is still healing, not yet ready to awaken. As he leaves, he is peaceful, and his memories fade into the past.
Neil Gaiman’s wife Amanda “doesn’t really like fantasy”, so the modest 178-page turner novella for adults is a brilliant “memory meets magic” work of fiction – worth the eight year wait! The Master of Myth creates a melting pot of the supernatural, horror and allegory- the obsession we have with money and power, the deceit that permeates our lives, are underlying themes of the tale. The book has debuted at no.1 at the New York Times Best Seller List.