Navy SEAL Turned Author Jack Carr Makes Unforgettable Debut with ‘The Terminal List’ [REVIEW]

He served his country without question. Then his country did the unspeakable. What does one of the nation’s best-trained warriors do when he has nothing left to lose? Find out in Jack Carr’s The Terminal List. 

Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Lieutenant Commander James Reece is a former Navy SEAL and the only surviving member of his team. During their last combat deployment, everyone was killed, including the aircrew that was sent in to save them.

When he returns home, Reece discovers that the death toll hasn’t stopped climbing. Someone has taken out the people he loves most on the very day of his homecoming. Despite his initial fears, the culprits behind these horrific acts aren’t warriors from a foreign nation. No, the truth is much worse. The masterminds behind this conspiracy are high-level members of his own government.

Suddenly without a family and military structure, Reece knows what he has to do. He turns the tables and becomes a vigilante intent on revenge, employing every lesson he learned during all his years working for the government to avenge the deaths of his family and his teammates, no matter what it takes.

With The Terminal List, Jack Carr proves that he can belly up to the bar alongside Vince Flynn, Stephen Hunter, Lee Child and Brad Thor. He knows his subject matter because he lived it, although he insists that Reece isn’t an autobiographical character. Still, his security clearance is so high his book is frequently redacted by the Department of Defense, so Carr knows what he’s writing about. Even the government is afraid he’s going to spill some secrets!

This story is tautly plotted and laden with an in-depth knowledge that rings so true it could only have been learned in the field. Yet even though he peppers the story liberally with enough insider knowledge it could easily have become a treatise on the art of war, he maintains his own unique voice by creating a vividly developed antihero who is both terrifying and sympathetic. This is a novel that seems destined for the big screen, especially since it will resonate with fans of Taken and 24. (After all, Reece seems like a cross between Jack Reacher, Bryan Mills, and Jack Bauer.) But The Terminal List is a novel that makes those stories seem tame by comparison. Carr takes revenge fiction to the next level and explodes out of the gate with a character who who can’t be ignored. Reece is here to stay.

Jack Carr
(Photo by Clay Goswick)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jack Carr is the author of The Terminal List and True Believer. 

He is also a former Navy SEAL and led special operations teams as a Team Leader, Platoon Commander, Troop Commander and Task Unit Commander. Over his 20 years in Naval Special Warfare he transitioned from an enlisted SEAL sniper to a junior officer leading assault and sniper teams in Iraq and Afghanistan, to a platoon commander practicing counterinsurgency in the southern Philippines, to commanding a Special Operations Task Unit in the most Iranian influenced section of southern Iraq throughout the tumultuous drawdown of U.S. Forces. As a result of his security clearance, his work is subject to review by the Department of Defense.

He lives with his wife and three children in Park City, Utah. Visit him at his home on the Web at OfficialJackCarr.com, like him on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter and Instagram. 

THE TERMINAL LIST
By Jack Carr
416 pp. Atria/Emily Bestler Books. $28.

Purchase The Terminal List at one of these fine online retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBound, and Powell’s.