Debt of Honor

Debt of Honor is a thriller by the American writer Tom Clancy, released on 17 August 1994. It is a direct sequel to The Sum of All Fears, and it is one of the long run of his novels with Jack Ryan at the centre.

The book is set in a world at peace, in which the enemies of one year have become the allies of the next, which is the arrangement that the story sets out to break. What happens is that a secret group of Japanese industrialists seizes control of their country's government.

The new government goes to war with the United States, and Ryan, who had been an analyst and then an operator, becomes the National Security Advisor and has to deal with the consequences. A car accident in East Tennessee, caused by faulty gas tanks made in Japan, is where the trouble between the two countries begins to be argued in public.

The book went straight to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. After the attacks of 11 September 2001 it was often mentioned for containing plot elements that were uncomfortably similar to what happened.