The Teeth of the Tiger
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| Author | Tom Clancy |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Ryaniverse |
| Genre(s) | Novel, Thriller |
| Publisher | Putnam |
| Released | 1 August 2003 (1st edition) |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 480 p. (hardback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-399-15079-X (hardback edition) |
| Preceded by | The Bear and the Dragon |
| Followed by | tba |
The Teeth of the Tiger is a 2003 techno-thriller novel by Tom Clancy. It is about an intelligence agency, called Hendley Associates, which is "off the books" and thus freed from the shackles of Congressional oversight. This agency was set up by Jack Ryan when he was President. It earns its money by intercepting communications between the CIA and the NSA, and using the information gained to make money on the stock market.
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[edit] Plot summary
The novel begins with the assassination of a Mossad agent in Rome. Jack Ryan Jr., the son of former President Jack Ryan soon finds himself confronting the world of international terrorism in the post-9/11 world along with his twin cousins. The Campus, the nickname for Hendley Associates, is an "off the books" intelligence agency.
The Campus sends out a strike team that utilizes succinylcholine to murder suspected terrorists. It's all training until a group of Muslim extremists crosses the U.S.-Mexico border with a crate of sub-machine guns and attacks suburban malls across the nation. Then the team goes across eroup Killing Muslim Extremists. In Brittan, Germany, and Italy.
[edit] Characters in "The Teeth of the Tiger"
- Jack [Shortstop] Ryan Jr – protagonist, son of Jack Ryan Sr.
- Dominic "Enzo" Caruso – FBI agent brother in "the Campus"
- Brian "Aldo" Caruso – US Marine brother in "the Campus"
- Sally [Shadow] Ryan – Jack Ryan Sr's daughter
- Katie [Sandbox] Ryan – Jack Ryan Sr's daughter, still in school
- Dan Murray – head of the FBI
- Gerry Hendley – former senator and friend of Jack Ryan Sr
- The Emir – the villian
- Mohammed – one of key leaders in The Emir's organisation
[edit] Literary significance & criticism
Opinion is divided regarding the merits of this novel: Some Clancy fans regard it as a partial return to form compared to his previous novel, Red Rabbit, which received horrible reviews among critics. Others note that dialogue and characterization, never a Clancy strength, are execrable, while the plotting is weak, linear and unbelievable.
The main characters, three highly intelligent young men who are portrayed as quite ethical, seemed to be oblivious to concerns of the legality of their activities, which can be seen as vigilantism writ large, especially given the lack of US government knowledge of their existence. It is also extremely difficult to believe that the morally upstanding Jack Ryan Sr of Clancy's previous books would countenance the establishment of such a legally dubious agency. The book never addresses this issue meaningfully.
There are a number of factual errors regarding the UK. Clancy states that Hereford, the home of SAS, is in Wales, in fact it is in England. Clancy states that Thames House is the new joint HQ of MI5 and MI6, in fact Thames House is just the HQ of MI5, MI6 are located across the river.
[edit] Conflicts with previous Clancy works
Up until and including Clear and Present Danger, Clancy attempted to keep Jack Ryan's universe similar to our own. Events within the early Clancy works were constrained so that they had no major visible impact on the flow of history; all such events were depicted as being heavily classified after the fact. Thus, the reader could easily assume that these events might very well have taken place within our world. This created a strong connection to Clancy's early works, as they seemed to be very pertinent to our society, and they addressed the issues of the day.
Beginning with the end of Clear and Present Danger, Clancy allows the Ryan universe to begin diverging from our own. Examples of this are listed below:
- Clear and Present Danger — at the very end of this novel, for the first time to date Clancy gives a name to the sitting President. Previously, the President had appeared in the novels but had remained unnamed, so that the reader could imagine him as an actual US President (presumably Reagan or Bush). Starting with this book, Clancy creates a string of fictitious presidents, thus reducing the relevance of his works to our world.
- Sum of All Fears — Israel cedes Jerusalem to the Vatican and Saudi Arabia, which makes Jerusalem a UN-policed protectorate. Residents of Jerusalem can choose between either Vatican, Saudi or Israeli judicial law. Denver is devastated by a terrorist nuclear explosion.
- Debt of Honor — after crippling the US economy, Japan invades and retakes the Marianas Islands; the US and Russia destroy all of their nuclear missiles; the US and Japan fight a brief war, which the Japanese lose; Japan becomes a nuclear power; a Japanese terrorist and proponent of the war crashes a 747 into the US Capitol during Ryan's confirmation hearing for the Vice Presidency, killing most of the House and Senate, the President, all nine Supreme Court justices, the senior military establishment (including the JCS), and most of the Cabinet; Ryan is left in charge of a decimated government.
- Executive Orders — Saddam Hussein is assassinated by one of his own bodyguards; Iran and Iraq merge to form the United Islamic Republic; the UIR launches a biological attack on the US using the Ebola virus; the US launches the Second Gulf War against the UIR and defeats them; the Ayatollah is killed in a smart-bomb attack by the US.
- The Bear and the Dragon — Russia is admitted to NATO; China and Russia fight a major war, in which the US intervenes on their NATO ally's side.
As can be seen, Clancy opted to allow his fictional Ryan universe to unfold differently from ours. However, in Teeth of the Tiger, Clancy made the decision to incorporate the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent war in Afghanistan into his universe. This seems odd, given the decade-long divergence of Clancy's fictional universe (with its own set of world-changing events) from the real world. Many readers find it difficult to imagine the September 11th attacks occurring in such a radically different universe, particularly one in which Iran has been invaded and an attack similar to 9/11 had already taken place. However, Clancy had introduced such real-world events ex post facto into his fictional universe before (i.e. referencing the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing in the opening pages of Executive Orders, an immediate sequel to Debt of Honor which, having been written in 1994, made no reference to the bombing), apparently with the expectation that readers would be able to suspend disbelief in order to comfortably reconcile his fictional universe with actual history.
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