In Barry Award-nominated Cameron's latest Tom Clancy continuation, a so-called chemical plant has blown sky high in Siberia, and the Russians claim it's their problem. But since hundreds of square miles are roped off and folks nearby are falling fatally ill, U.S. President Jack Ryan fears a terrible contagion will soon sweep the planet. He just doesn't know what it is or how to stop it.

At the start of Cameron's strong fourth entry in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan franchise (after 2019's Tom Clancy: Code of Honor), a sonar buoy in the Arctic Ocean relays to a scientist aboard a research vessel what sounds to her like "Banging metal. Screams. Human screams." After this attention-getter, the scene shifts to Ho Chi Minh City, where John Clark, the director of operations of the secret organization known as the Campus, is training his director of transportation in the finer points of spycraft. Elsewhere, the rest of the Campus team, including Jack Ryan Jr., is investigating an industrial espionage case that connects to a Chinese attack on an offshore drilling rig. Meanwhile, a top Chinese scientist, Liu Wangshu, who has invented groundbreaking developments in submarine technology, has gone missing, and no one--Chinese or American--knows where he is. Various plots and subplots, along with the usual stories about weapons, geography, and history, plus a few romantic entanglements, keep the pages turning. This is classic Clancy--only new and improved. Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, WME. (Nov.)

Cameron continues the late Tom Clancy's long tradition of exciting thrillers featuring the Ryan family and rock-ribbed American heroes. As an American science vessel pushes through Arctic ice in the Chukchi Borderland, a researcher hears banging and underwater human screams. Soon it becomes clear that a "boomer is in distress and calling for help." Said boomer is a People's Liberation Army submarine patrolling the Arctic, and its crew will die if it can't surface. At the same time, series regular John Clark is in Vietnam training new agent Lisanne Robertson on how to avoid landing in a "Yourassisgrassistan" prison. And the Chinese have their worries as they combat the "Three Evils" of "terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism." They crack down on Uyghurs, who want "independence from the Chinese boot," so Chinese intelligence is looking for a Uyghur separatist woman in western China whose husband had been trundled off for reeducation. But luckily, "the good guys"--in particular, the CIA's John Clark--are looking for her too. It turns out that the woman has specific engineering knowledge of considerable military value to the great powers, and she wants to escape. Maybe Clark can help, or maybe not. And as if all this isn't complicated enough, the CIA is pretty sure it has a mole whom the Chinese have code-named SURVEYOR and who is selling secrets to Beijing. The mole hunters search relentlessly, because they "hated Communism with the intensity of a thousand suns. Socialism was no better." Clancy's fans are used to these grand-scale plots, where a big part of the fun is seeing how all the puzzle pieces fit together in one big salute to American power and righteousness. And as for Cameron's style, it's as if Clancy himself were at the keyboard. Cameron is a worthy keeper of the Clancy flame. Fans will be pleased. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.