Book Review: THE TERMINAL LIST, by Jack Carr
Military fiction from a man who knows it firsthand!
Authenticity is one of the sharpest arrows you can have in your quiver when you’re trying to get readers to buy into your story. Since Jack Carr actually is a Navy SEAL, he puts it right through the bull’s eye with THE TERMINAL LIST, which you’ve probably heard of on Amazon.
Admittedly I tried the show a couple of months ago and haven’t yet finished the pilot. It seemed slow and was hard to follow when the action scenes popped up. When a friend recommended I try the books, I pulled the trigger, and was thoroughly impressed from the get-go. This is contemporary military fiction at its finest.
The Story
James Reece is a husband, a father, and a Navy SEAL. While on a mission in Afghanistan, his entire unit gets ambushed, resulting in the death of 40 special operators. Only Reece and his best friend Boozer survive, and within a short time of coming home, Boozer “commits suicide.”
But Reece knows Boozer, and knows he could never do that. Other details don’t add up, and when he gets debriefed, Reece quickly realized the op was a setup, and he doesn’t know why. He’s about to go home when his wife and daughter are “randomly” assaulted by gang members in San Diego.
Reece doesn’t have to have all the pieces to this puzzle to know it paints an ugly picture. Powerful people want him dead. Problem is, he’s a Navy SEAL, not an idiot.
What follows is half a detective procedural, and half unrestrained open warfare as Reece sets the entire world on fire to find out why he got set up, and who’s pulling the strings. And holy crap, was it a wild ride.
Of the many things I loved in this book, at the top of the list is that fact that it didn’t waste time getting to where it was going. When we meet Reece, he’s already been a SEAL for a while. He knows how to do the job, and he just does it. He’s up against a powerful villain but he doesn’t go hide in the wilderness for 60% of the story, leveling up so he can fight him. He just says “f*** it” and goes Full Metal Badass as he pulls on the string, unraveling it to the very top.
The Characters
Reece gets most of the page time here. I just love his competence, not only with his trade, but with his ability to read other people, decide who he can trust and why, and also, just how hard it is to make him trip up. He’s not invincible, and it isn’t like he goes the whole story without making a mistake. He gets his butt kicked a few times. But it’s not because he’s in over his head—he’s just against staggering odds, and he doesn’t care.
The supporting cast is the usual cadre of helpful ride-or-dies in military books—people that Reece can call in a situation like this, and get help when he needs it. Carr gives us just enough of their backstories to show that they’re interesting, and show why they’re useful to Reece.
As for the villains, they make up the eponymous ‘terminal list.’ Reece figures out who’s involved, hunts them down, interrogates them, and kills them. Dead ones get scratched off and new names get added until there’s nobody left. The scheme goes all the way to the top of our filthy, dirty political system, ending with a power couple that totally aren’t Bill and Hillary, wink wink, nudge nudge.
The World
Strikingly similar to ours, but none of our politicians are mentioned. Other than the tongue-in-cheek Clintons, none of the other leaders make convincing comparisons to ours. We’re still in Afghanistan, America’s still in a bunch of debt, and guys who shoot guns still get more chicks than guys who drink soymilk.
The Politics
It’s not a right-wing/left-wing thing, but it absolutely bucks the trend of what major studios and publishers are Allowed To Say, which by their definition makes it extremist and right-wing.
That said, Carr isn’t writing a book where the bad guys are all donkeys and the good guys are all elephants; it’s the believers versus the schemers. That’s the only line that matters.
Content Warning
Hard-R. He doesn’t hold back from the real violence that a SEAL would encounter in these situations. The killing scenes were brutal and detailed, but the hardest part to read was Reece’s assault on a cartel brothel in Mexico, where he had to raid a whorehouse as certain, eh, activities were underway. So be advised. Reece operates in the cold dark corners of the world as he goes deeper into this roach hunt.
Who’s it for?
Readers of fast-paced, detailed, realistic fiction. Especially military fiction.
Why read it?
Because it’s badass. So refreshing to read a book where the good guy is good, the bad guys are bad, and the good guy doesn’t have any problems with putting the bad guys in the ground because they are, objectively, consistently, and on a long-term basis, pure evil. We’d all love to live in a world where justice is swift and thorough and unrelenting, but we don’t, so we read about it when we can. Here it is.