Hi all,
       I'm reading Clancy's latest TOOTHLESS TIGER (or words to that
effect) and as usual, you can't believe one word Tom writes as fact.

 You'd think with all his money, he'd hire a proper researcher to get
the facts right, or at least admit that he writes rubbish off the top
of his head like the rest of us. Every time he comes up against an
area of my expertise, he's wrong! He writes as if he is the voice of
God, but every "fact" I read has to be cross-indexed in my brain
against "Tom-fact... rubbish, ignore." It's clogging up my brain, at
at age when there isn't that much left.

 And it keeps getting worse, one clanger after the other! He doesn't
research anything!

 Tom's characters are supposed to be computer geniuses, NSA eat your
heart out, but every time they need to transfer data from one station
to another, they print it! Poor Tom doesn't even know about networks!

 His heroes are just sweet all-Amurrican boys committing cold-blooded
murder for the fatherland. Tom's premise is that you don't need to be
a stone-killer sociopath to be an assassin. He sees no essential
difference between a battlefield and murder in the street. A hitman is
an admirable profession... Tom Clancy is a scary man in need of urgent
psychiatric assistance or at least, a reality check.

 The whole book is self-indulgent without even a proper ending. What
he needs is a good editor to cut a third out of it, and someone with a
whip to force him to shape up and write right. What a heap of rubbish!

 Tom is now on my don't-ever-be-tempted-to-read-him-again list.

 If this is what $100 million does to a good writer, I'm glad I'm
poor.

Regards,
Bob
 

--- BQWK Alpha 0.5