My Washington Examiner Review of Jack Carr's 'Cry Havoc'

The Washington Examiner ran my review of Jack Carr’s thriller Cry Havoc today.

You can read the review via the pages below or the below text:

Cry Havoc By Jack Carr, Atria, 560 pp., $29.99 

In Jack Carr’s outstanding series of thrillers featuring the fictional former Navy SEAL and intelligence operative James Reese, there are several mentions of and passages about James Reese’s father, Tom Reese, a CIA officer and former Navy SEAL who served in Vietnam.

The latest entry, Cry Havoc, puts Reese front and center in action that takes place in South Vietnam and Laos during 1968. Jack Carr (seen in the above photo) writes about the tumultuous year 1968, in which Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luthor King were assassinated, and the U.S. was racked with violent anti-war demonstrations and race riots. 1968 was also the bloodiest year in the Vietnam War.

Jack Carr, a former Navy SEAL who rose from an enlisted sniper to a SEAL Lieutenant Commander serving in Iraq, retired in 2016 after serving 20 years. His thrillers describe combat and firearms with accuracy and verve. Carr’s well-researched novel opens with the taking of the USS Pueblo by the North Koreans in international waters on January 23, 1968. Despite the spy ship’s crew’s inability to destroy their highly classified electronic equipment and limited armament needed to protect the ship and crew, the Pueblo was ordered to sea. North Korean ships fired on the Pueblo, killing one sailor and capturing the whole thing, taking 83 American sailors prisoner in the bargain. President Johnson, bogged down by the Vietnam War, chose not to respond militarily to this blatant act of piracy and the theft of America’s state-of-the-art spy equipment.    

Carr then shifts the action to South Vietnam, where Navy SEAL Gunners Mate 1^st Class Thomas Reese is teamed with a Green Beret named Frank Queen at a forward operating base. Serving as part of a shadowy special operations unit, Reese and Quinn capture a North Vietnamese intelligence officer with a satchel of intelligence documents. The pair of special operators are then ordered to escort the prisoner to Saigon, where the North Vietnamese officer will be interrogated by the South Vietnamese. The special operators and their prisoner are attacked on the streets of Saigon, leading Reese and Quinn to become involved in intelligence operations in Viet Nam’s capital. 

Reese and Quinn are in Saigon on January 30, 1968, when the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese launch their Tet offensive, which surprised the South Vietnamese and the Americans. The two special operators engage in a fierce firefight with Viet Cong sappers on a hotel rooftop as Viet Cong sappers attack the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, and South Vietnamese and American forces battle the Communists across the country. 

As Carr notes in the novel, although the 1968 Communist Tet offensive was a shock to the Americans and the South Vietnamese, the Communists were quickly beaten back and severely crushed, effectively destroying the Viet Cong as a fighting force for the rest of the war. Yet Tet was portrayed by most of the American and world news media as a Communist victory and an example of why American forces should exit the war. Even the North Vietnamese and their Soviet and Chinese benefactors were shocked at the ensuing psychological victory for the North Vietnamese. 

The action shifts again as Reese and Quinn illegally enter neutral Laos, where the North Vietnamese, also based in Laos illegally, are operating supply lines called “the Ho Chi Minh Trail.” After a deadly battle, Reese escapes back to South Vietnam, where he informs his officers that he believes a spy gave up their operation, which explains why so many American operators were missing in Laos. 

Cry Havoc is a war novel as well as a spy thriller. The action flows from realistic combat in the jungles of South Vietnam and Laos to the Kremlin, where Soviet GRU military intelligence officers execute a plan to transport American POWs from North Vietnam to the Soviet Union for interrogation. The GRU officers also discuss the Pueblo’s intelligence haul and the American Navy spy John Walker, who provided the Soviets with the keys to the communication equipment. 

Back in Saigon, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese spies and American intelligence officers live, operate and compete. A Communist spy ring in Saigon handles an anti-war American official, who provides valuable classified information while routinely being seduced and drugged by an attractive Vietnamese woman spy. Also in the picture is a Soviet GRU intelligence officer, a master at seduction and recruitment of Western spies, who is in Hanoi planning the transfer of American POWs to Moscow. He is aided by a brutal, homicidal GRU Spetsnaz special operator, who will later confront Reese.  

In addition to fine fictional characters, Jack Carr also offers cameos of actual legendary historical intelligence figures in Vietnam, from U.S. Air Force General Edward Landsdale to Pham Xuan An, a South Vietnamese who trained under Lansdale and went on to become a TIME magazine correspondent. An was a friend and advisor to many of the American correspondents covering the Vietnam War in Saigon, only to later be uncovered as a North Vietnamese spy. 

Cry Havoc is a seamless blend of historical fact and fine fiction. The novel offers combat action, romance, espionage, exotic intrigue, and unforgettable characters.

And it’s a reminder that 1968 was a tumultuous year abroad, not just at home. 

Paul Davis, a Navy veteran who served on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War, covers crime, espionage and terrorism.