Point of Contact

Point of Contact is Mike Maden’s first Jack Ryan Jr. novel, and it leans back into Jack Jr.’s original cover role: a Hendley Associates financial analyst auditing foreign books. The job in Singapore is supposed to be a quiet due-diligence review. It isn’t.

The novel reintroduces Paul Brown — a retired CIA analyst pulled back into the field — who will recur in Maden’s later books. It is the start of the middle run of the series, where the Campus operations are more corporate-espionage than paramilitary.