Jack Carr's Thriller 'Red Sky Mourning' Is Now Out In Trade Paperback

Former Navy SEAL and best-selling thriller writer Jack Carr announced on his Facebook Page that Red Sky Mourning is now out in trade paperback.

Red sky at night, sailors' delight.
Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

Like the old sailor’s warning, a storm is brewing in Red Sky Mourning.

A rogue Chinese submarine armed with nuclear missiles is laying off of the coast of America. A sinister Silicon Valley tech giant is plotting with quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence, and a U.S. senator controlled by the Communist Chinese is close to becoming the American president.     

Countering these threats is a quantum computer that has gone dark and deep into the internet. While dark, the quantum computer has become knowledgeable and intelligent and has become a weapon unto itself. Known by the name Alice,” the computer’s only contact is former Navy SEAL James Reece. 

I've been an Ian Fleming aficionado since the 1960s when I was a teenager and saw Sean Connery as James Bond in Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, and subsequently bought all of The Ian Fleming novels. I was pleased to discover that Fleming's thrillers were darker and more complicated than the films. 

So I especially liked Jack Carr's James Bond homage references throughout Red Sky Mourning. He has said that the sly references were a love letter to Ian Fleming and his character, Bond. James Bond. 

On an earlier Facebook Page post, Jack Carr noted that he visited Goldeneye, Ian Fleming's Jamaican villa, where Fleming wrote all of the Bond stories. 

(I spent a week at Goldeneye in the mid-1980s with my wife. The villa, overlooking the sea, is a magical place for writers and Bond-lovers).   

Red Sky Mourning is fast paced, well-written, action-packed and suspenseful. The thriller is also accurate in dealing with military weapons, tactics and details. If you have not read Red Sky Mourning, I suggest you go out and buy a copy.   

Simon and Schuster, his publisher, offers the below bio of Jack Carr:

Jack Carr is a former Navy SEAL who led special operations teams as a team leader, platoon commander, troop commander, and task unit commander. Over his twenty 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 US Forces.

Jack Carr retired from active duty in 2016 and lives with his wife and three children in Park City, Utah. He is the author of The Terminal List, True Believer, Savage Son, The Devil's Hand, In the Blood, Only the Dead, Red Sky Mourning, and Targeted Beirut. His debut novel, The Terminal List, was adapted into the #1 Prime Video series staring Chris Pratt. He ias also the host of the top-rated Danger Close podcast. You can follow Jack Carr on Instagram, X, and Facebook.    

I interviewed Jack Carr for Counterterrorism magazine back in May of 2019. I asked him how he would describe his character, James Reece. 

“James Reece is a man on a journey. He is a likable guy you’d want to have a beer with but who can also flip a switch to get the job done. He has the training and experience to do the things he does in the novels. He is a student of war and of the hunt,” he replied. 

 

I also reviewed his third novel Savage Son in my Washington Times On Crime column.

You can read my Counterterrorism magazine Q&A with Jack Carr and my Washington Times’ column below: