The fun part of most Tom Clancy books --- if we’re using “Tom Clancy” to refer to the franchise and not to the (sadly deceased) author --- is the evil plot. There is pretty much always an evil plot. Often it has to do with nuclear weapons; Clancy has destroyed a good portion of Denver at least once, and has come close to full-scale nuclear conflict in other books. Often the evil plot is a little less dangerous, and if so, it tends to be incredibly involved.

COMMANDER IN CHIEF is a straight-up mano a mano duel between Jack Ryan and a thinly disguised Russian president, formerly of the KGB. Valeri Volodin has his designs set on invading and occupying Lithuania in a vain attempt to restore past Soviet glory. But before that can happen, an evil plot must materialize, and it’s all about money. To wit: the Russian leader has a large pile of money in his retirement account, and he has a pressing need to move it out of the country into foreign currency where his mafia cohorts can’t get to it. Not to mention there’s a need to boost energy prices before the move into Lithuania. It’s a big, complicated evil plot, and although it’s not quite as interesting as blasting motorcades with artillery shells, it has its charms.

"Greaney devotes a good bit of time to following around a Marine unit that’s hunting Russian tanks and an anti-submarine warfare frigate that’s patrolling the Baltic. These stories are the truly thrilling parts of the novel and true to Clancy’s best work."

There’s actually a very silly scene, set in the Situation Room of the White House, in which Ryan pieces together the elements of the evil plot --- as though he’s read the book already --- and is told by his staff that he’s indulging in conspiracy theories. On a political level, Ryan has things figured out, and spends most of the book indulging in diplomacy to try to encourage the bickering European states to provide military support to the beleaguered Lithuanians.

The real work, of course, is done by the guys in the trenches, who (as usual in the later books) are the employees of The Campus, the clandestine counterterrorism agency that is responsible for putting the pieces of the evil plot together and disrupting it. The Campus veterans are scattered all over the map here, with Ding Chavez and Dominic Caruso scouting around Lithuania disguised as cable installers, Jack Ryan Junior lolling around European capitals in indulgent luxury chasing around money, and John Clark skulking around dive bars in the Caribbean.

COMMANDER IN CHIEF has a few problems. Clancy novels work best when they are not too closely tied to real-life drama, and the threat of Russian adventurism into the Baltic States is a real-world problem that NATO does not seem to be taking seriously enough. Similarly, the Russian president here is simply too close to the real Vladimir Putin for him to be an interesting character in his own right. The same old tired cast of characters is still doing the same old things, and there aren’t enough new characters to freshen things up a bit. The Russians, too, are all stock characters, even the TV journalist who spends a little too much time getting chummy with the Putin character.

The good news here is that the bad guys are more than a little resourceful, and they throw a couple of monkey wrenches into the works, just enough to make things interesting. And both the political brinkmanship and the details of the military encounter with the Russians are told with verve and precision. Greaney devotes a good bit of time to following around a Marine unit that’s hunting Russian tanks and an anti-submarine warfare frigate that’s patrolling the Baltic. These stories are the truly thrilling parts of the novel and true to Clancy’s best work.

COMMANDER IN CHIEF is a worthy successor to the Clancy lineage, but here’s hoping that future books in the series expand the fictional universe a little more and don’t hew as closely to the series formula.