History Literature / PatriotGames

* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: After the second attempt on his life by the ULA, Prince Charles decides that he's had enough of simply standing around like a target and actually works to apprehend the terrorists.

* MistakenForServant: The terrorists mistake Sissy Jackson for the Ryans' maid. It's a fatal mistake, because they fail to realize there are unscheduled dinner guests in the Ryan home, and Robby Jackson is later able to get the drop on them.

* IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim: Sargent-Major Breckonridge pulls one of these when Ryan finally [[spoiler:has Miller at his mercy]]. Breckonridge says he was perfectly willing to cover for Ryan if he had gone through with it, but "if you'd really wanted to kill him, you would have remembered to cock it. Lieutenant, I had you figured out a long time ago." Ryan himself wonders if Breckonridge is right.

* HiddenAgendaVillain: As the FBI and MI-5 note, the Ulster Liberation Army's motives are completely unknown; they break every "rule" that the PIRA has followed (don't attack the royal family, don't operate on American soil), with no clear end goal. [[spoiler:Turns out, O'Donnell simply wants to do enough damage to the PIRA and eliminate their leadership so that he can take over.]]

** Also from the PIRA, though this is more about professionalism than morality: they refuse to target the British royal family, knowing that such an attack would be counterproductive and only cost them public support. This is one of the differences between them and the ULA.
* EvilOnlyHasToWinOnce: The ULA terrorist Sean Miller notes that anti-terrorist forces have to be lucky every time, while terrorists only have to do so once, in a nod to a similar comment made in the aftermath of the RealLife [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombing Brighton hotel bombing.]]

* FalseFlagOperation: The attempt to kill Ryan and his family on American soil is ultimately this, as it ends up being mistaken as a PIRA operation.

* GoodCopBadCop: Invoked in-universe. During Sean Miller's brief stint in prison, he's brutally assaulted by a pair of ordinary criminals, an incident that was arranged by the warden. The anti-terrorism officer assigned to Miller's case arrives just in time to save him, and is infuriated with the jailer for his behavior. Miller, however, assumes that the entire thing was a good-cop-bad-cop ploy in order to make him grateful and willing to talk to the officer, which explains his lack of remorse when he later kills him in cold blood.

* {{Scotireland}}: The ULA takes advantage of Americans' tendency to fall for this trope, as it is hard for an American ear to tell the difference between a Scottish and Irish accent.

** Averted in a zig zag fashion. When CIA intelligence analysts use a spy satellite to figure out which of several camps belongs to a rogue faction of the IRA, they are forced to use a still picture and to make some rather ambitious inferences to determine that the camp belongs to the bad guys - the camera can't show them faces. On the other hand, when an DGSE platoon raids the camp at night, the infrared spy satellite watching the action appears to give a perfect 'camera in the sky' view of the action. On the other hand, the raiders complete their mission in a matter of a few minutes.

** The IRA and ULA notwithstanding, there's also Alex Dobbens and his group of revolutionaries on US soil.

* AnonymousRinger: While the royal family is only referred to by title, it's virtually impossible not to realize that Ryan saves the lives of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and Prince William while he was still an infant.

* MoscowCentre: With their smallest role in any of the novels before ''Teeth of the Tiger'', Ryan is probed by a KGB "legal" spook for possible recruitment during a seminar at Georgetown. This becomes a ChekhovsGun later in ''Cardinal of the Kremlin''.

The second Literature/JackRyan novel written by Creator/TomClancy, and the second one chronologically (until ''Literature/WithoutRemorse'', it was the first chronologically). The book was published in 1987, and takes place in 1983-84 [[note]] TheOtherWiki says 1982 based on Ryan's age, but the Princess of Wales says she's pregnant with their second child near the end of the novel, and a van used by the terrorists is described by the police as an '84 model at one point [[/note]].

* IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim: Sar-Major Breckonridge pulls one of these when Ryan finally [[spoiler:has Miller at his mercy]]. Breckonridge says he was perfectly willing to cover for Ryan if he had gone through with it, but "if you'd really wanted to kill him, you would have remembered to cock it. Lieutenant, I had you figured out a long time ago." Ryan himself wonders if Breckonridge is right.

-->"The terrorist's eyes crossed almost comically on the business end of the Remington shotgun...He realized that he was, after all, the wrong man for this kind of job."

* WesternTerrorists: The IRA and ULA notwithstanding, there's also Alex Dobbens and his group of revolutionaries on US soil.
** And ''Action Directe'', a French radical left-wing group whose Libyan training camp Jack Ryan identifies while looking for the ULA. Similar groups are alluded to in West Germany, Italy, and elsewhere.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Alex Dobbens is uncomfortable about the attack on [[spoiler:Ryan's wife and daughter]], but not uncomfortable enough to turn down the money the ULA is offering. When the ULA hires him again for [[spoiler:the attack on the Ryan house]], he only agrees to go along if [[spoiler:Cathy, Sally, and the Ryans' maid (who is also black)]] are not targeted. This is when Miller begins to believe that Alex is sentimental and therefore untrustworthy.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Alex Dobbens is uncomfortable about the attack on [[spoiler:Ryan's wife and daughter]], but not uncomfortable enough to turn down the money the ULA is offering. When the ULA hires him again for [[spoiler:the attack on the Ryan house]], he only agrees to go along if [[spoiler:Cathy, Sally, and the Ryans' maid (who is also black)]] are not targeted. This is when Miller begins to believe that Alex is sentimental and therefor untrustworthy.

* TechnologyMarchesOn: The British police investigating the attack on the royals are quite impressed by Jack's "Cambridge Datamaster Model-C Field Computer", which has ''two megabytes'' of memory. Well it ''is'' pretty impressive for 1983.

* MistakenForServant: The terrorists mistake Sissy Jackson for the Ryans' maid. It's a fatal mistake, because they fail to realize there are unscheduled dinner guests in the Ryan home, and Bobby Jackson is later able to get the drop on them.

* TheRadioDiesFirst: When they rescue Miller the ULA disables the radios on the ferry transporting him to the Isle of Wight. [[spoiler: However they forget about the radio in the police van transporting him ''on'' the ferry, which saves Sgt. Highland's life and possibly the entire ferry, as they are able to call in help much sooner.]]

* NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont: At the end of the novel, with [[spoiler:Sean Miller]] in custody, Ryan is all set to take his gun [[spoiler:and personally execute Miller.]] As it happens, the gun was previously safed [[spoiler:by Sar-Major Breckinridge]], and he ended up avoiding committing murder, the better for his sanity.
* OhCrap: Jack's reaction to seeing news of Miller's escape on CNN.

** Miller also shoots Sgt. Bob Highland, the guard who saved him from PrisonRape, twice in the gut specifically to make it a slow and painful death, blaming Highland for having set it up in the first place. [[spoiler: Highland survives, though he has to learn to walk again.]]

* NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont: At the end of the novel, with [[spoiler:Sean Miller]] in custody, Ryan is all set to take his gun [[spoiler:and personally execute Miller.]] As it happens, the gun was previously safed [[spoiler:by Sergeant Breckinridge]], and he ended up avoiding committing murder, for the better for his sanity.

* HeroicBSOD: Ryan succumbs to this immediately after saving the Prince and Princess of Wales, realizing that he killed a man (albeit a terrorist) with his own hands.