Jack Ryan is the new US President - in the latest blockbuster from the world's leading thriller writer, continuing the story of the spectacularly successful No 1 bestseller Debt of Honour.

At the dramatic climax of Debt of Honour, a runaway Jumbo Jet has crashed into the Capitol Building in Washington, leaving the President dead, along with most of the Cabinet and Congress. Dazed and confused, the man who only minutes before was confirmed as the new caretaker Vice-President is told that he is now President of the United States. President John Patrick Ryan.

But how do you run a government without a government? Where do you even begin? Ryan knows that the eyes of the world are on him now - and many of them are unfriendly. In Beijing, in Tehran and even in Washington, there are those eager to take advantage. Soon they will make their moves; soon they will present Jack Ryan with a crisis so great even he could not imagine it.