First edition cover
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Author | Tom Clancy |
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Country | United States |
Language | English |
Series | Jack Ryan universe |
Genre | Techno-thriller |
Publisher | G. P. Putnam's Sons |
Publication date
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1 August 2003 |
Media type | Print (hardback) |
Pages | 480 pp (hardback edition) |
ISBN | (hardback edition), ISBN (mass market paperback) |
OCLC | 52424139 |
813/.54 21 | |
LC Class | PS3553.L245 T44 2003 |
Preceded by | The Bear and the Dragon |
Followed by | Dead or Alive |
The Teeth of the Tiger is a thriller novel by Tom Clancy. Published on August 1, 2003, it is a part of the Jack Ryan universe, and follows the adventures of Jack Ryan Jr., son of the original Jack Ryan, set in a post-9/11 world. It is also the reader's introduction to "the Campus," a fictional, privately owned, highly covert intelligence agency.
In Rome, a Mossad station chief is assassinated. The murder piques the interest of the Campus, an "off-the-books" intelligence agency situated in direct line-of-sight between the CIA and the NSA. A private military company, Hendley Associates, funds the Campus via stock market trades influenced by the captured intelligence data, thus removing federal oversight and allowing free rein in its operations.
Jack Ryan Jr., the son of former president Jack Ryan, soon discovers the Campus' operations. Wanting to serve his country in the post-9/11 world, he is hired by the agency as an analyst. Elsewhere, Brian Caruso, a nephew of the former president, is a U.S. Marine returning from Afghanistan to be decorated for his achievements in battle. Dominic Caruso, his brother, is an FBI agent who, while investigating a kidnapping of a little girl, finds her in a tub raped and killed. Caruso kills the suspect, ostensibly in self defense after purposely getting noticed and the suspect reacts by grabbing a knife at gun-point (and thereby providing a "threat").
The Caruso brothers are soon recruited into a Campus strike team, chosen for their ability to kill enemies in cold blood. However, Brian is unsure of the morality of carrying out preemptive assassinations, even against terrorists. This changes when cells of Islamic fundamentalists cross the U.S.-Mexico border and attack several suburban malls. Brian and Dominic happen to be at one of the malls when the attack occurs. Although they efficiently find and dispatch all four shooters, dozens of people are killed; similar massacres occur at most of the other targeted sites. When a child dies in his arms after the attack, Brian abandons his earlier moral qualms. The Campus decides the brothers are ready and implements a "reconnaissance-by-fire" strategy to flush out the terrorist leaders.