Dead or Alive

Dead or Alive is the 2010 Tom Clancy and Grant Blackwood novel that brings together the Campus, the off-the-books intelligence operation in the Ryanverse, with the long-running Jack Ryan ensemble. The hunt for an Emir-class terrorist organization runs through global geography and through the kind of dense procedural Clancy specialized in throughout his career, with Blackwood providing the actual prose discipline.

Blackwood's strength in Dead or Alive is the propulsion of the chapters and the careful integration of the Campus operatives with the established Ryanverse cast. Jack Ryan Jr., John Clark, and Domingo Chavez all get appropriate page time. Fans of Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp novels or Brad Thor's Scot Harvath series will recognize the post-9/11 political-thriller register operating at its commercial peak.

The book is long and the procedural details are dense. The closing chapters earn the wait.

Three stars. A reliable late-Clancy political thriller. The Dead or Alive Grant Blackwood and Tom Clancy entry is best for readers already deep into the Ryanverse. New readers to Clancy should start with The Hunt for Red October; new readers to Blackwood's solo work should look at his Briggs Tanner novels.