"Cry Havoc" by Jack Carr
Above: "Cry Havoc" by Jack Carr. 560 pages. 14 November 2025.
Reece must work in an environment of CIA turf wars and Soviet espionage games. Moral ambiguity abounds. Carr immerses the reader into the era's fatalism, from anti-war protests back home to the Ho Chi Minh trail's endless enemy hordes. Victory is not sweet... it tastes like ash in Carr's rendition.
I completed reading this book today.
"Cry Havoc" is Jack Carr's eighth novel and an ambitious departure from the modern-day James Reece series that catapulted him to #1 New York Times bestseller status. It's a Vietnam War novel reminding me of Nelson DeMille's "Up Country," which I read shortly after it was published in 2002.
Principal protagonist is Tom Reece, Navy diver, and father of James Reece, principal character of Carr's first seven novels. The setting is 1968. The war in Vietnam.
1968 was the year of the Tet Offensive, the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War. Tom Reece is a member of a six-person special ops team (two gringos and four Montagnards) - MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observations Group. Reece's MACV-SOG group is periodically inserted, illegally, as it were, into Laos. Reece and his team navigate the Ho Chi Minh Trail and experience a few too many deadly ambushes by the enemy. Is there a spy at headquarters passing along details of MACV-SOG missions?
Yes. There is a spy. When a routine MACV-SOG group recon mission unearths evidence of a high-level Soviet mole embedded with North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops, Tom Reece is redirected into the world of espionage. He is ordered to "terminate with extreme prejudice." His search for the baddies takes him into the underbelly of Saigon, Moscow's Lubyanka prison and Soviet safe houses in East Berlin.
Jungle firefights, described in meticulous, highly researched detail, erupt in sprays of CAR-15 fire and claymore shrapnel. There is an amazing scene in the book where two helicopters are in the process of extracting Reece's MACV-SOG team from a fire fight. Reece is on the point of being successfully rescued when he sees the other helicopter, carrying some of his teammates, crash into the jungle canopy. Reece, hyper loyal to his teammates, jumps back into the jungle canopy with an intent to rescue his friends. The descriptions of these military feats are detailed and meticulous.
Reece's entanglement with Ella, an enigmatic reporter, adds a forbidden romance to the mix. As the Tet Offensive explodes Reece must choose: obey chain-of-command blind faith or unleash havoc on the traitors eroding America's position. The story moves from Vietnam to a Berlin finale.
Reece must work in an environment of CIA turf wars and Soviet espionage games. Moral ambiguity abounds. Carr immerses the reader into the era's fatalism, from anti-war protests back home to the Ho Chi Minh trail's endless enemy hordes. Victory is not sweet... it tastes like ash in Carr's rendition.
Recommend.
Addendum:
Above: Santy Auditorium, Park City, UT. 17 October 2015.
Jack Carr, Author. Park City's own. Talk on his latest novel, "Cry Havoc." "Cry Havoc" is a prequel to the James Reece series. It is set in and around the Tet Offensive, 1968, in the Vietnam War. Protagonist? Tom Reece, James' father. I never drive up or down the road, US 89, between Alpine, WY and Hoback Junction, WY without Carr's compelling description of James Reece taking, out, by sniper rifle from way up on the mountain, a rogue CIA agent, driving his car up US 89, in Carr's first novel, "The Terminal List (now also Netflix)."
Q and A. My question to Jack Carr:
I've lost a lot of sleep worrying about the Kessler Effect which concept you introduced in "Red Sky Mourning." What is your personal sense of the risk of the Kessler Effect to civilization progress?"
Answer: Jack Carr described how every book had an area of knowledge that he had to research deeply e.g. AI, Quantum Computing, High Finance. and the Kessler Effect (low satellite layer turning into an orbital debris field that prevents further rocket launches).