Cold war thriller writer Tom Clancy dies at age 66
Tom Clancy said he got his big break when Ronald Reagan praised 'Red October', pushing him onto the New York Times best-seller list
Tom Clancy
1947-2013
Tom Clancy, whose hi-tech cold war thrillers such as The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games made him the most widely read and influential military novelist of his time, has died. He was 66.
Penguin Group (USA) said Clancy had died on Tuesday in Baltimore. The publisher did not disclose a cause of death.
Clancy arrived on best-seller lists in 1984 with The Hunt for Red October. He sold the manuscript to the first publisher he tried, the Naval Institute Press, which had never bought original fiction.
A string of other best-sellers soon followed, including Red Storm Rising, Patriot Games, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears and Without Remorse.
Clancy had said his dream had been simply to publish a book, hopefully a good one, so that he would be in the Library of Congress catalogue. Four of his books, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears, were later made into movies. A fifth, based on his desk-jockey CIA hero "Jack Ryan", is set for release in December. Directed by Kenneth Branagh, it stars Chris Pine and Keira Knightley.
His 17th novel, Command Authority, is also due to be published that month.