I bought the latest Tom Clancy novel, mumble-mumble-mumble, at the NOLA airport for reading on the trip back. I seem to have left it in the seat-back pocket. Besides the total waste of $8.50, I’m not at all bothered by that…it reads like the guy was writing a screenplay, even 100 pages in. Now, I enjoyed the heck out of his first couple of books, which were no great literary shakes, but they had interesting characters and cool plots. I basically quit reading about the time Jack Ryan got thrown into his umpteenth unplanned horrific national security crisis. This, though, was so freaking cadboard, it was almost sad. Practically a Word macro…like a Grisham or a Koontz for mil-diplo wonks.

I wouldn’t be so harsh if I didn’t see so damn many people toting his books around. What’s up, peeps? Just enjoying the serial? That’s cool by me…I love serials. I gotta say, though, that I haven’t found any new good ones in a while. Everything seems to be written by chicks for chicks with main chick characters. Is that an unplanned Oprah effect? Whatever it is, I can’t get into it. None of them are hard-drinking, heavy-smoking, ass-kicking (and -kicked) super-hard-boiled badasses like Inspector Rebus from Ian Rankin.