Hidden Agendas

Tom Clancy's Net Force #2

by Steve Perry, Tom Clancy (Series Creator), Steve Pieczenik (Series Creator)

In the year 2010, computers are the new superpowers. Those who control them, control the world. To enforce the Net Laws, Congress creates the ultimate computer security agency within the FBI: the Net Force.

A list of every U.S. spy in the Euro-Asian theater ... the movements of rival drug cartels ... Someone with access to classified information is posting it on the Internet --- and it's costing lives. Net Force Commander Alex Michaels is in the hot seat. Now, before a hostile Senate committee, he must justify the very existence of the Net Force.

Meanwhile, a virus is unleashed that throws the federal financial systems into chaos. And the Net Force operatives must hunt the wily hacker through the twists and turns of cyberspace --- down a path that leads them dangerously close to home ...

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Action, Espionage, Adventure, Suspense, Science Fiction

366 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 13, 1999

About the author

Librarians note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Steven Carl Perry has written over fifty novels and numerous short stories, which have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Perry is perhaps best known for the Matador series. He has written books in the Star Wars, Alien and Conan universes. He was a collaborator on all of the Tom Clancy's Net Force series, seven of which have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list. Two of his novelizations, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire and Men in Black have also been bestsellers. Other writing credits include articles, reviews, and essays, animated teleplays, and some unproduced movie scripts. One of his scripts for Batman: The Animated Series was an Emmy Award nominee for Outstanding Writing.

Perry is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, The Animation Guild, and the Writers Guild of America, West

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, I'm just a sucker for this stuff. I bet other folks would give it a 3 or 4, but this is squarely in the list of my favorite type of book. I'm a Steve Perry fan (he is only credited in the acknowledgments, but it's clearly one of his books) and a Tom Clancy fan, and together they make up for Perry's lack of detail and Clancy's sexism, to create a really fun ride with characters I really like. This is the first book in the Net Force series, a follow-on series to the original Net Force book and miniseries. In this one, classified information starts leaking is the most destructive possible ways, and Net Force has to track down the culprits. Plus various relationships develop. It's definitely technology/military/martial arts genre (which I love because I'm a software architect/military historian/martial artist) and not particularly deep, but fun.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book 2 to the series. I like the short, sweet and full of action style of the books. Pure mental bubble gum.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has aged badly. The technology comes across as comical in 2019. The VR scenarios where two guys duel in the wild west—one guy representing a firewall—is absurd. This is only the tip of the iceberg when dealing with the nonsensical technological aspects of the book.

If you can forgo all that, this is a fun/fast pace read of a book. I didn’t read the first book in this series as I got the book from my brother’s wife and had no idea it was a series, but it’s easy enough to get and there’s enough backstory to understand it.

Anyway, a woman reading this book might not like the representation of women in here. The women come across as needy as hell and basically genius IQ models with a need to be boned. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me that thinks this.

I will say that this is a definite beach reading page turner.

[Dane Sherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always, there was an excellent cast of characters. This overrides any errors concerning technical issues that many computer savvy folks like to point out and pan the author for. Good plot and a well developed story. Need to use a better proofreader as I found sever grammatical errors. Overall it’s a very good read.

[Nancy E Ball · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good action and flow

I like the flow of the action. Not much of the personal relationships kind of reader. The tech is solid on all fronts and it kept me interested. The VR explanations were spot on and captured my imagination. If you like computer tech mixed with the digital solider, you should like this one. It left enough like ends that I will catch the next on soon.

[J.A. Devenport · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was pretty disappointing. The internet security premise definitely hasn't aged very well. On top of that it wasn't very well written, with a few POV characters and story arcs that could have been cut from the story because they were so pointless. Also, I felt like the main character's hard-on for a 90's Miata was a bit overblown and once again, pointless.

[Fernando · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still a solid Tom Clancy book, but definitely a bit weaker and slower than the first installment of Net Force. Many plot points left open in the first book start to close, but not in the most natural and well constructed way. The first half of the book is too uneventful, the second too rushed. Worth the read thou

[Lojicholia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nearly DNF’d; the first part of the book is mostly the personal lives of NetForce personnel and the villains. Honestly, I don’t care for stilted commentary on sex, the usage of 1970’s racist terms, or two dimensional characters. The latter part of the book did manage some action that was on topic and brought it back around to a 3, but I’m still tempted to give this a two or lower

[Dhawal Narang · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a total drag for a thriller. Except for maybe last 50-60 pages, it takes a great force of will to keep turning pages and not put down the book. Author focuses on personal life of characters instead of trying the build the story. Many of the characters introduced do not do anything for the story at all. Totally a disappointment for a Tom Clancy novel.

[Jan Jaap]

Een van de twee openingscitaten is uit Lucas (8:17).
De tekst in de Nieuwe Bijbelvertaling (2004/2007) luidt : "Want niets dat verborgen is blijft geheim; alles wat verborgen is zal bekend worden en aan het licht komen."

Als oorspronkelijke titel vermeldt de uitgever "Shadow Agendas"

[Gina Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story and plot was outstanding!

[Ernest · Rating 4 out of 5]

good story

[Christopher DuMont · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book and good continuation of the series - will definitely continue reading and hope they start building out the characters a bit more in the next go around.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

ok

[Al]

Definitely Clancy

[Lana · Rating 1 out of 5]

This reads like an AI novel with a terrible grasp on modern slang.

[Ian McGaffey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first Netforce novel. An interesting take on the future from 1999. Amusing how the technology turned out a little different, but the story arc still works.

[Rob Cowart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not great!

Not a well written yarn. My first look into a Net Force action and it was not great! Will really have to think about sampling any other of the series.

[Andreu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Molt bon llibre, ben portat i ben tensionat. La sèrie Net Force és molt més bona que Op Center. No te res a veure. Espero que l’últim de la sèrie no em decebi.

[Ross L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sorta slow, but interesting plot.

[Rogiever Javier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the flow of the action, on how intriguing the plot is. I also liked how a few relationships formed in the middle of the story. It's like watching them develop with each other. The setting was mesmerizing, a workplace!! The VR thing was really great and kept me interested. But, I don't know why I kept having this book down for no reason. Maybe because I'm getting bored already. The ending was great, but I kind of wanting more. I think it's best if the ending includes the proceedings of Hughes.

[Cade · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not unreadable, but too far fetched for my tastes.

I think this is the second book in the Net Force series and it shows. I didn’t read the first, but generally the first book in a series is full of action, etc. while the second often spends more time developing characters and going into back-stories. That was certainly the case with this book.

The book is based on an FBI special ‘Net Force’ team that is made of computer geeks that are supposed to protect the internet from bad guys. Now, a book on people sitting in front of a computer isn’t very interesting, so the story uses Virtual Reality (VR) scenarios for the characters to go into the network and look for the bad guys that some how are also in the VR world. Really kind of hokey and turned me off. Overall, the characters are too contrived to seem believable. They are an elite team of computer geniuses, but also some of them are elite martial artists and/or commandos, even in RW (real world), but even the ones that are not commandos operate on the commando team. In the end, the character of Computer Geek doesn’t make for very exciting action, so the author trumped up far fetched scenarios to put the Computer Geek into the action, and as luck would have it, the Computer Geek is also highly skilled in hand-to-hand combat and covert operations. Good thing to, or the story line might drop dead.

I did find the book interesting as it was written in the mid-1990’s, but is set in the year 2010, but it is a 2010 without the events of 9/11/2001. So it was kind of interesting to see where Tom Clancy thought we would be, technologically 15 years in the future, and to see where we actually are. I’m not a computer geek, but I’m pretty sure no one puts on VR suits to go into some kind of Wild West scenario to track down bad guys on the internet.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like all the other Steve Perry novels I've read, NET FORCE: HIDDEN AGENDAS is competent but uninspired storytelling. The external threat feels rather tacked-on, and most of the book is spent simply exploring the characters (even ones who have no impact on the overall story). There's enough office romance here to set the stage for a soap opera--which I don't think is the sort of thing Tom Clancy fans are clamoring for. Thankfully, most of the characters (with the notable exceptions of Jay Gridley and Tyrone) are interesting enough to make the inter-personal drama of the novel at least reasonably entertaining. Still, though, I would have preferred a lot more military action, and a lot less relationship angst.
But the biggest problem with these NET FORCE novels is that the technology involved is pure fantasy. Not only that, it doesn't make any sense. For example, this book would have you believe that certain Net Force agents, rather than performing their jobs quickly and efficiently, instead take the time to craft elaborate new VR environments each and every time they want to access a server located outside the country. Yeah, right. (Because it's SO important to feel like you're actually in Russia anytime you access a Russian server.) And their only justification for this massive expenditure of time and resources is basically, "What's the point of doing something if you can't make it fun?"
If it's realism you're after, NET FORCE is definitely not the series for you. It's not a bad series, but it's certainly not on par with what you'd expect from the Tom Clancy brand. If you read book #1 and found the characters and situations interesting, then book #2 will provide you with more of the same.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

2025 Review 011. Net Force #2 Hidden Agendas by Steve Perry

Page Count : 501

This was another book that I won't read again in the future.

Despite it having another good story, I still didn't get invested in all of the characters and found the plot very repetitive.

I found that the character I actually liked the most wasn't the main character (Net Force director Alex Michaels), but rather the assistant director of Net Force Toni Fiorella and main computer investigator Jay Gridley.

It seems to be that Net Force always seem to be able to solve the problems that come up just at the right time to be able to stop the bad guy from doing something even worse.

While the scenario in each book is interesting and cleverly solved using VR technology, but they seem to be easily solved eventually, just in time for the end of the book.

I'm going to finish this series, but they will definitely not be a series of books that I reread in the future, partly due to the size and the fact that most of these books tend to focus on the characters personal lives rather than their actual jobs and solving crimes.

3*
***

[Jed · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a sequel to the first book in the series net force and expanded the thrilling and intriguing storyline. Steve Perry wrote this book in the 90's and set the story to take place in the future in 2010 where he envisioned that computers would be the super powers of the world. But people like hackers, terrorists and cybercriminals use the internet to organize and commit crime. To prevent this from happening, Net force was created by the U.S. government to prevent the crimes committed of these people. The story starts with a college student who learned online how to make a bomb and planted bombs on a college building that killed several people, leaving Net force partially responsible for not stopping this preventable crime. Because of this, the U.S. government is blaming the main character and director of Net force, Alex Michaels and deciding whether Net Force stop being funded. This leaves Alex Michaels struggling to keep up with stopping online crime, staying in touch with his distant family he almost never has time for and managing Net Force. I like how Steve Perry transitioned from different characters because he wrote in third person omniscient, so you can connect the ideas and thoughts of each character. I didn't really like how some characters' names were never mentioned until later in the story because it was hard to keep track of them but it did overall make the story more intriguing.

[David Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am reviewing the novel Net Force Hidden Agendas by Tom Clancy which is a very good thriller which I bought from a car boot sale. This book is part of the Net Force series and is set in 2010 and is about an organisation called Net Force which polices the internet & contains a small number of elite troops called Net Force Strike Team. This book was set in the future when it was published and is about a world where terrorists use the internet to communicate and launder money etc. The basic plot is arab terrorists have bombed the State Building in Louisiana and they used a recipe for explosives obtained from the internet. One of their objectives is to find out how the terrorists are funded and cut them off from it. The Strike Team used to deal with the terrorists but a lot of research has to be done first. There is a happy ending and even though the terrorists are from a poor country their leaders are very wealthy and live in state of the art complexes. I enjoyed reading it although it's probably aimed at the teen market.

[Shawne Etrata · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Slight spoiler) Honestly, it's great to read a story about future tech once again but now taking into understanding some things felt iffy since when reading I couldn't tell that they were off the VR headset or still on it. In the story Alex Michaels is placed in charge of finding a hacker with a list of every U.S. spy in the Euro-Asian how does that work if they are in VR? However, all I read was them having to put on the headset and not take it off, though may have misread it. There seems to be a lack but also not much entertaining. Some areas did catch my attention once again but after all, lost me towards the end. Also about the end of the story, all of the main action was in the 2nd part, primarily towards the end, why is that?

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, this is Net Force #2 in the series, Hidden Agendas, and let me tell you… there is nothing hidden nor sacred about this one. What is it with all the sex? Note to Mr. Clancy and friends: just because a woman is beautiful and smart does not mean she is desiring of extensive, intimate, physical contact with available male types. In fact, I’d say the “smart” quotient precludes the unmarried sex factor. I know, I know, the books are intended to reach out and touch the average American male libido but here’s to hoping book number 3 focuses more on saving the Nation and less on satiating the male imagination.

[Gabor · Rating 2 out of 5]

yikes! where do i start... right this book is not great, not even good. too many plots which doesn't add to the story at all (I'm looking at you Tyrone... a boomerang? really??). this book is a mess, the story is really stupid and feels like its going nowhere.

...and the ending.... well yeah the "climax" is more like a bump. when i finished i thought: is that it? catching the bad guys is done in 10minutes or less... we getting more romance in this book than actual action.

im definitely disappointed in this book especially the great promise of the first book.

[M.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The year 2010 may be a point in history now, but Clancy and Pieczenik produced a wonderful storyline in this novel written in 1999. For this reader, there is nothing quite like books that can incorporate espionage, suspence, and intimacy into one piece of work. If there was one flaw, the ending could have been more detailed, but Hidden Agendas is worthy of being a classified a sequel that delivered the goods. I certainly look forward to the third installment of the Net Force series. Stay tuned.