In the novels of Tom Clancy, heroic American intelligence officer Jack Ryan saves the world from catastrophe several times over before eventually becoming president of the United States and averting a nuclear strike on Washington.
But today in Annapolis, Jack Ryan is a corporate entity that Clancy will try to wrest from the custody of his former wife as the state's highest court hears oral arguments in a bitter post-marital squabble with more echoes of The War of the Roses than The Hunt for Red October.
Clancy's lawyers will fight to overturn a 2005 decision by a Calvert County Circuit Court judge giving Wanda T. King, formerly Wanda Clancy, control of a series of books marketed under the author's name but written by others. In that order, upheld by the Court of Special Appeals in September, the judge removed Clancy as managing partner of Jack Ryan Ltd. Partnership and installed King in his place - at least where the pseudo-Clancy books are concerned.
The Baltimore-born author of Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and other best-sellers turned to the state Court of Appeals, which decided in December to hear the case.
At issue is a lucrative series of a dozen books called Tom Clancy's Op-Center - a fictional U.S. anti-terrorist agency written in a Clancy-esque style and given muscular titles such as Op-Center: Acts of War and Op-Center: State of Siege.
While Clancy and former-friend-turned-business-adversary Steve Pieczenik are credited with creating the series, the bulk of the writing has fallen to a less exalted author named Jeff Rovin - whose name can generally be found on the covers in much smaller print than Clancy's.
The Op-Center franchise became a potent moneymaker for Clancy and his partners during the 1990s - earning an estimated profit of $25 million, according to court papers.
However, the famous writer apparently became disenchanted with the series after King walked away with an equal share of the Jack Ryan Limited Partnership as part of the couple's divorce settlement.
In an e-mail introduced as evidence in the case, Clancy said of the Op-Center books: "I don't even read them."
King's suit charges that Clancy's 2001 decision as managing partner to remove his name from the novels was a breach of his fiduciary duty, because it diminished the value of the asset.
