Review | The Terminal List by Jack Carr

The Terminal List by Jack Carr

There seems to be a trend in movies lately to make characters gray. They’re not bad, but they’re not all that good, either. With so many gray characters out there, finding a hero you can cheer for without any reservations can be refreshing. Jack Carr provides that kind of character, and though there’s an argument that James is grayer in his tactics, telling a satisfying story about a good guy who wears the whitest of white hats and where the villains are unequivocally deserving of everything they’re going to get. His hero is sympathetic, and if Carr uses cheap tricks to create sympathy, remember that it’s a thriller, not literary fiction.

I grew up on the likes of Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum, and while it’s been a lot of years since I’ve read anything by either, Carr’s writing, in comparison, feels more straightforward. Where Clancy might spend chapters setting up a villain and the rest of his book sending Jack Ryan on a hunt for the villain (or for the Red October, as the case may be), Carr cuts right to the chase, drops you right in the action, and through quick flashbacks fills in the gaps. It makes for a page-turner, the perfect novel for warm summer evenings. I listened to it while I was mowing the lawn and then read it long after lights out to see what happened. It’s action-driven, a close cousin to Top Gun or The Dirty Dozen, and it’s worth every page.

With The Terminal List, you know who the bad guys are almost from the beginning and the only question in your mind is how are they going to meet their demise. Carr sounds like he knows his subject well; he is, after all, a former Navy Seal himself, and every page feels authentic, sometimes violently so: James Reese is a Seal and he’s getting revenge–he’s not filing lawsuits here. Expect explosive and deadly results as he deals with the conspirators with extreme prejudice.

Unfortunately, I read The Terminal List right before watching Chris Pratt play the role on Amazon, and it was a disappointment. The changes for the show just don’t improve the plot. Jack Carr had it right the first time, and I’m a big fan of not messing with a good thing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. (And when in doubt, trust the book. It’s always better than the movie.)

The Terminal List was a fun way to close out the summer, and I think I’ll try out the sequel to see what Carr does with his character. There were few loose ends in The Terminal List, so I’m predicting that James Reese becomes a one-man A-Team. “If you have a problem if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire…the A-Team.”

Title: The Terminal List
Series: The Terminal List #1
Author: Jack Carr
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Release Date: March 6, 2018
Format: Paperback
Pages: 416

A Navy SEAL has nothing left to live for and everything to kill for after he discovers that the American government is behind the deaths of his team in this ripped-from-the-headlines political thriller that is “so powerful, so pulse-pounding, so well-written—rarely do you read a debut novel this damn good” (Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author).

On his last combat deployment, Lieutenant Commander James Reece’s entire team was killed in a catastrophic ambush. But when those dearest to him are murdered on the day of his homecoming, Reece discovers that this was not an act of war by a foreign enemy but a conspiracy that runs to the highest levels of government.

Now, with no family and free from the military’s command structure, Reece applies the lessons that he’s learned in over a decade of constant warfare toward avenging the deaths of his family and teammates. With breathless pacing and relentless suspense, Reece ruthlessly targets his enemies in the upper echelons of power without regard for the laws of combat or the rule of law.