"The Terminal List" by Jack Carr

Above: "The Terminal List." Jack Carr - 443 pages.

I've long been a sucker for vengeance literature and film.

I completed reading this book today.

I've long been a sucker for vengeance literature and film.
Like...Elmore Leonard's "Valdez is Coming," for example." Forced to gun down an innocent man, part-time sheriff Roberto Valdez is nearly killed and run out of town when he seeks justice for the dead man’s family. But the same townsfolk who laughed at Valdez’s dark skin, mocked his decency, and tied him to a cross will find themselves on the wrong side of a gun when the lawman comes back to deliver his own brand of justice. The book was made into a fantastic film starring Burt Lancaster as Valdez.

And, take the movie "Death Wish," starring Charles Bronson. A New York City architect, Paul Kersey, becomes a one-man vigilante squad after his wife is murdered by street punks in which he randomly goes out and kills would-be muggers on the mean streets after dark.

The "Terminal List," is a debut, vengeance novel by Park City resident, Jack Carr (pen name). A Navy SEAL, Lieutenant Commander James Reece, has nothing left to live for and everything to kill for after he discovers that the American government is behind the deaths of his SEAL team in a set-up, Taliban ambush in Afghanistan.

Navy Seal team leader Reece was supposed to be killed along with the rest of his squad in the ambush. Reece's star crossed SEAL squad had been used, unauthorized, unofficially, and unbeknownst to them, as guinea pigs for medical experimentation. The perp higher ups would stand to make a ton of money should the surreptitious experimentation succeed. The experiments resulted in unanticipated, putatively, cancerous brain tumors in the SEALs. So, the evidence of misbegotten medical experimentation had to be covered up by the perp higher ups at all costs. After covering up the botched experiment, the venal brass could fix the medical fail, move on to successful experiments, and still cash in.

When Reece survived the Taliban ambush, and arrived back stateside, he began to ask questions. He was never comfortable about the flawed parameters of the Afghanistan assignment that resulted in the ambush in the first place. As a mid level field commander, notwithstanding his uneasy feeling, there was not enough evidence to suggest that his ill fated unit couldn't accomplish their mission. And, who's going to think that military higher ups would deliberately sabotage their own guys?

An assassination squad was sent to Reece's San Diego home, but, Reece wasn't there. Tragically, his wife and daughter were killed by the assassination squad.

Now, are we angry enough about what has happened to Reece? We sure are! Should he violate legal niceties to take down his evil perps? Absolutely! He can't get vindication on something like this through legal channels! Like we cheered on Robert Valdez in "Valdez is Coming," and Paul Kersey in "Death Wish," so we root for James Reece in "The Terminal List."

Carr is steeped in the lore of special forces military hardware and weaponry. Detailed are descriptions of the tools that Reece uses to take out the killers of his wife and daughter, and his SEAL teammates.

Reece, as a sniper, takes out a perp in his moving car as the smug (as we learn in Carr's descriptive narrative) private, government consultant drives from Star Valley, WY to Jackson, WY. A venal congressman, married to the equally pernicious Secretary of Defense, is taken out by an IED type device in his limo in front of a tony New York City hotel, site of an afternoon tryst with a woman not his wife. Reece offs a scumbag SEAL Admiral in Coronado by fitting the admirals' unwitting assistant with an explosive vest. There is more and "better," but, its not my intent to "spoil" the book.

Reece can't mount his vengeance campaign alone. He is assisted by a young, female, star reporter, an former army, female helicopter pilot whose life he once saved, and one or two other trusted male confidants. Reece has found out that he also is infected by a tumor, therefore he is further incentivized to accomplish his vengeance quest believing that he will die, notwithstanding. His confidants help him stay one step ahead of the SEAL/Defense Department apparatus that is hunting him down.

Does he accomplish his goal of taking out the perps from bottom to top? Not saying... but, there is a twist redolent with irony at the end of the book.

The book has 443 pages. Just as the binge watcher sits through eight episodes of "Game of Thrones," so the reader of "The Terminal List," could easily be drawn into reading the book in one sitting.

Fly leaf praise for this first novel comes from a who's who of thriller writers and reviewers, including Lee Child and Brad Thor. Thor says, "Absolutely awesome! So powerful, so pulse-pounding, so well-written - rarely do you read a debut novel this damn good. I have been telling everyone I know to drop everything and get this book." And, there is no question that Carr's Reece and Child's Reacher would be the closest of buddies.

Carr has libertarian instincts. There are sub-themes in the book. Carr cite's the need for responsible citizens to be skeptical of big government solutions to problems. A citizen's right, if not responsibility, to bear arms is strongly affirmed in the novel.

I haven't made an explicit count of the number of fiction books I read, compared to non-fiction. Asked to guess, I'd say one fiction for every five non fiction. I have a friend who advocates strongly for the periodic fiction escape read. It gets the mind off worries and minutia, he says. I'm a big believer in his dictum. And, "The Terminal List," for me, was top flight therapy.

Now.... we have to solve the mystery of the true identity of author Jack Carr. He seems to "fly low" in the Park City community... he's not known here by his pseudonym and at least the people I know don't know him by another name. I see a Park City luminary name in the book's "Acknowledgements" section. I'll try to track that down. It could be a coincidence.

At a very minimum we need to get Jack Carr as a speaker at La Societe Deux Magots (LSDM), our Park City, Wasatch Bagel, ROMEO group. There are many vets in our group, including one with sniper skills. Carr, like James Reece and Jack Reacher, would feel at home here.