- published: 09 Oct 2011
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Patriot Games (1987) is a novel by Tom Clancy. It is chronologically the first book (predating the events in The Hunt for Red October) focusing on CIA analyst Jack Ryan, the main character in almost all of Clancy's novels. It is the indirect sequel to Without Remorse. The title comes from an Irish Rebel Song called "The Patriot Game", an Irish ballad about the Border Campaign in Northern Ireland.
Ryan saves the (unnamed) Prince and Princess of Wales, along with their newborn firstborn son, from a fictional Irish terrorist group, the Ulster Liberation Army (ULA), by incapacitating one of the terrorists, taking his semi-automatic pistol and shooting another during a kidnapping attempt on the London Mall. The incapacitated terrorist, Sean Miller, is sentenced to life imprisonment for killing the Prince and Princess' driver (the maximum penalty in the United Kingdom) but is freed by members of the ULA as he is being transported to prison. The ULA later goes after Ryan and his family, partially as an act of revenge, but primarily because they seek to reduce public (and specifically American) support for the rival Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). The ULA plans a strike against Jack Ryan and his family. The assassin sent to kill Ryan is intercepted before he manages to complete his task, but Ryan's expectant wife, Cathy, and daughter, Sally, are hurt by the terrorists: their car crashes after Sean Miller sprays it with automatic gunfire from a Uzi on the freeway. They are flown by helicopter to the University of Maryland Medical Center.