Jack Carr

Jack Carr — a pen name for George Petersen — is an American novelist and former Navy SEAL who spent two decades in Naval Special Warfare, retiring as a Commander in 2016 after service that included sniper deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and two Bronze Star Medals with Valor. He drew directly on that career for his debut, The Terminal List (2018), which introduced Lieutenant Commander James Reece, a Navy SEAL who survives a catastrophic ambush and comes home to find the people responsible are closer than he imagined. The character anchors a series — True Believer, Savage Son, The Devil's Hand, In the Blood, Only the Dead, Red Sky Mourning, and the prequel Cry Havoc — built on real special-operations authenticity rather than generic action-thriller shorthand. Carr has also written nonfiction, launching a military-history series on notorious terrorist attacks with Targeted: Beirut (2024), co-authored with Pulitzer Prize finalist James M. Scott. The Terminal List became a #1 Amazon Prime Video series starring Chris Pratt in 2022, with a second season premiering 21 October 2026 and a prequel spin-off, Dark Wolf, starring Taylor Kitsch as Ben Edwards. Readers new to Carr should start with the original novel rather than the show, which compresses and reshapes the book's plot. Most recently, Carr stepped outside the Reece universe to co-write The Fourth Option (2026) with fellow thriller author and former naval intelligence officer M.P. Woodward, introducing a new protagonist, ex-SEAL and CIA operative Chris Walker, in what is positioned as the start of a new series.