The Teeth of the Tiger is the first of a long series of action novels centering on John Patrick Ryan, Jr. Here we meet young Jack fresh out of Georgetown University who wants "...to play in the bigs." He finds the right place: Hendley Associates, an intelligence organization which works outside the system unfettered by the restraints of laws placed on the FBI and the CIA. Outside the system, but it is located on the sight line from NSA Fort Meade to CIA Langley and has connections to nearby Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and access to Fort Meade's intercepts. Hendley Associates "...was illegal as hell, and not the least bit ethical." The perfect place for Jack, Jr. to work.
Among those employed by Hendley are Jack's cousins, fraternal twins, Marine Major Brian and FBI agent, Dominic Caruso. These three main characters face off against a combine of bad guys: Mohammed, a rich, blue eyed, terrorist chief with a Cambridge accent, and Jefe Ernesto, head of a Colombian cartel who considers himself a business man with customers to satisfy and who is very conscious of "operational security."
Much of the book is devoted to rationalizing extra judicial killing by agents of Hendley Associates. The twins, especially Marine officer, Caruso are reluctant to accept the concept. Brian comes around to complete compliance after watching a small boy shot by terrorist die in his arms. FBI agent, Dominic, already leans heavily toward the concept having taken a life of a suspected child killer in a moment of rage.
In the course of the novel the twins with the help of Jack, Jr. cold-bloodedly assassinate several suspected terrorist-abettors abroad. The bar for the decision to take the lives is much lower than that made by U.S. presidents to date, and it is suggested in the novel that such assassinations will be made within the U.S. also.
There is much reminiscing about events and people from earlier Jack Ryan, Sr. novels.
I expect Clancy fans will enjoy this novel: I did not.

2021 reread via MLN audiobook narrated by Stephen Hoye:
Having just finished "Dead or Alive", I realized that I had very little memory of this book which immediately preceded it - time for a reread :)

I find that the Jack Jr. plotlines don't appeal to me as much as the earlier books focused on his father (Jack Ryan). I think some of that is a certain distinct amount of uncomfortableness with the Campus such as being willing to murder people that they decide are bad guys. Granted that I also think that they are bad guys, it still bothers me that some private enterprise (or even the government) would handle the situation by assassination. ( )

My only Tom Clancy book I ever read. It was so horrible that I vowed to never read another one again. Ever. ( )

The first 200 pages were repetitious and boring and read like Russian literature, and were filled with editorial errors (Sacramento vs. Provo comes to mind). After the action finally started, it got better, but still had very unrealistic side journeys into the thought processes of unimportant people. ( )

They have adult westerns, so maybe this is supposed to be an adult spy story. The book could also be called, "the Making of an Assassin", or in this case two of them. On the one hand, the brothers readily take to it and on the other hand they whine about the right or wrong of it. The dialog seems to be written by adults who think this is how teen-aged boys converse. It could have been a good story if perhaps it had a different writer. If you are looking for excitement, you won't find it ( )