Word: ryans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Michael Ryan was a quiet fellow, except when it came to talking about guns. He never tired of telling his neighbors in Hungerford, a little farming town some 75 miles west of London, about his collection of firearms or showing them off whenever anyone paid attention. Ryan, 27, had recently joined the Tunnel Rifle and Pistol Club, where he practiced regularly. Said Club Manager Andrew White: "He was a very good shot. He hit an 18- by 14-in. target consistently at 100 meters." Last week Ryan used his shooting skill to deadly effect, turning his neighbors into targets...
...tramped through nearby Savernake Forest last Wednesday, Ryan wore a headband, a combat jacket and an ammunition belt slung over his shoulder. Suddenly he drew his 9-mm pistol and opened fire on a mother picnicking with her two children. While the horrified tots, ages 2 and 4, sobbed by their mother's body, Ryan calmly climbed into his silver Vauxhall Astra and drove...
Seven minutes later he arrived at the row house he shared with his widowed mother in Hungerford. He shot her, killed the family dog and set the house on fire. Retrieving a semiautomatic Kalashnikov assault rifle and ammunition from a garden shed, Ryan began walking toward the center of town, firing bursts and reloading as he went. "He was just strolling along the road, shooting at anything that moved," said Barbara Morley. Said another witness, Christopher Browsher: "He looked just like Rambo...
Unfortunately, this tourist-brochure fantasy is only the beginning of Patriot Games, a novel that performs the odd trick of growing exponentially less interesting with the turning of each page. Ryan returns to the U.S. and resumes his old humdrum life, teaching history at the Naval Academy, with the added burden of playing a sitting duck. For it is only a matter of time -- oodles of time -- until the U.L.A. "bad guys" attempt to punish Ryan for thwarting their plans in London...
...rate of one inch per yard of linear travel"), but this time out he concentrates on his human characters, a subject apparently beyond the range of his research. Patriot Games is a minefield of unintended comedy. When, for instance, the Princess announces that she is two months pregnant, Ryan knows just what the etiquette of the situation demands. He turns to the Prince and says...