Teeth of the Tiger

I've read quite of few of the Tom Clancy books and have to admit that I do think he is a very good writer of political/military fiction. The latest book of his that I just finished reading was Teeth of the Tiger. Unfortunately, I also think its one of the weakest books in his Ryanverse series.

The premise behind the book is that Jack Ryan, in his last act as President, sets up a completely new black ops agency to protect America's interests. The new agency is so black that it doesn't show up at all in any government books which is managed by the new agency being privately funded and with no government oversight.

At the start of the book, the new agency is just intelligence gathering. The book itself deals with how the new agency finds and trains some field agents to act as assassins and covers their first mission to its successful conclusion (ie death of their designated target). Although this sounds like a promising idea, it falls flat for several reasons.

First, the new agency manages to find a new drug which can covertly kill people while making it look like the victim had a heart attack. The drug is so successful because it subsequently breaks down in the victims body so that even a skilled pathologist wouldn't find the drug unless said pathologist was specifically looking for the drug or was an alumni of the TV show CSI.

In other words, a successful mission is a dead victim with no-one the wiser. While this may sound great to real life field agents, the result is that the book just fizzles out at the end with the bad guy being dead and no real "bang" to the ending. It also doesn't help that the people who get assassinated are just middle men and not the real power behind the latest attack on the US which just serves to make the ending feel like the middle part of the story.

Clancy tries to get around this by having the last victim realise that he has been assassinated (after delivery of the drug) which leads to him pulling a knife on Jack Ryan Jr but the scene never really manages to build any tension. By that point, you know the guy is gonna be dead in 10 seconds and that Ryan Jr has about as much chance of dieing as I have of getting intimate with Megan Fox.

Which leads nicely into my second gripe. The main characters in this book are Jack Ryan Jr (son of Jack Ryan) as well as two brothers who just happen to be cousins of Jack Ryan Jr. The main cast are all exceptionally bright or skilled obviously which helps deflect any accusations of nepotism but really, you would have expected Clancy to branch out a bit further than the family of Jack Ryan. I mean, I know this is the Ryanverse and all but still...

All in all, a relatively disappointing entry from Tom Clancy. It was a good book and had a lot of the classic Tom Clancy elements. Unfortunately, the story just fizzled out at the end.