Cry Havoc and Gone Tomorrow: a two-fer review

Former Navy SEAL sniper Jack Carr is the author of the Terminal List series of novels, the first book of which got made into a successful Amazon streaming series starring Chris Pratt. Carr's novels, of which there are now eight, are: The Terminal List (2018), True Believer (2019), Savage Son (2020), The Devil's Hand (2021), In the Blood (2022), Only the Dead (2023), Red Sky Mourning (2024), and his latest, Cry Havoc (2025). Cry Havoc is different because the focus isn't on James Reece the ex-Navy SEAL (you write what you know), but rather on a young Tom Reece, James's Navy SEAL father. Cry Havoc takes place in 1968 and weaves historical fact through its fictional narrative. 1968, the year before I was born, was the year of the Tet Offensive, a massive, coordinated attack against American forces. Tom Reece is part of an inter-service MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—Studies and Observations Group) group doing undercover, illegal operations inside and outside of Vietnam in places like Laos and Cambodia. Reece works with Army Special Forces (Green Beret) operator Frank Quinn, his senior and mentor. The plot zooms in and out between the fighting and operations on the ground and the plotting going on in places like Moscow: Southeast Asia is one of the chessboards on which the USA and the USSR are playing The Great Game, and it's the locals (as well as US and other troops) who pay the price for all of the global, geopolitical maneuvering. I found this novel to be a refreshing change of pace after seven James Reece adventures, which had all begun to run together. Tom Reece is fighting in a different era, but Carr is at pains to include prose reflecting how that far-off era still has relevance for today. While I'm not expert enough to separate all of the fact from all of the fiction, I felt that I had gained a bit of an inside view as to the geopolitics of the time, not to mention a better appreciation for the risks taken and the sacrifices made by all of the fighting men of that era. Tom Reece appears more as a memory in the earlier James Reece novels, so seeing him up close and personal helped to fill in a lot of blanks. It's a great novel if you're into this genre—lots of weapons-tech talk, plenty of blood and guts and friends lost, and lots of spy-level intrigue (James Reece remembers his father best as a covert operator). The novel goes by quickly, even for a slow reader like me. Recommended.

Lee Child's 2009 Gone Tomorrow may be the best of the Jack Reacher novels that I've read thus far. I will say right off the bat, though, that the novel's principal villains don't end up getting the poetic justice they deserved, so that was frustrating. Some background: Lee Child is the pen name of England-born James Dover Grant, originally from Coventry, England before eventually relocating to New York City. His knowledge of NYC plays a huge role in the plot of Gone Tomorrow, which involves his hulking protagonist Jack Reacher in a mystery that begins in New York City when Reacher sees a stressed-out, muttering woman on a late-night subway who looks as if she might be a suicide bomber. This assessment is based on an Israeli twelve-point list of things to look for in suicide bombers, and she ticks off all twelve points. As it turns out, though, the woman has no bomb: she has a gun. When Reacher approaches her, thinking to put her out of commission before she can blow up the train, she pulls the gun out, exchanges cryptic words with Reacher, then blows her own brains out. As is typical of these Reacher stories, we eventually come to realize that the woman's death has international implications for high-level US politicians as well as organizations in the "-stan" countries. The villains in this story are some of the most nightmarishly vicious people ever put to print: there's a slow, cruel disembowelment scene that stuck with me, and that reminded me of a harrowing passage about impalement from an old book called Bridge on the Drina. I was hoping that, by the end, Reacher would deliver poetic justice by disemboweling the villains once he'd found them, but alas, it was not to be. That said, the novel as a whole is a satisfying read, with plenty of Reacher's terse, first-person narration, constant reminders of how huge he is (250 pounds with gorilla-length arms), and a decent sense of closure by the end. It was interesting to see Osama bin Laden figure as a major background player: when the novel was published in 2009, bin Laden was still alive and at large; he was killed in 2011. 

It occurs to me that Gone Tomorrow and Cry Havoc have disembowelment in common: in Cry Havoc, one of Tom Reece's best friends ends up being captured and gutted, his intestines covered in gas and burned in front of him while he's still alive. The novels also have international intrigue in common as the camera zooms back to show us the global scope of their respective plots. Child, being British, is sometimes unable—even after thirteen novels—to drop certain Britishisms from his prose in what is supposed to be an American narrative. He uses the UK term hosepipe for example; Americans normally just say hose. But despite his occasional linguistic lapses (I'm sure I'd make the mirror image of his mistakes were I to write a British story), Child has a good grasp of American idiom and speech patterns, so Reacher as a character feels authentic. Since most Reacher novels are a first-person narrative from Jack Reacher's perspective, there's little suspense about whether Reacher will survive his various encounters. With these novels, it's never about whether Reacher will survive but about how he'll do so, and what sort of fate awaits his enemies. Reacher is written as unapologetically ruthless and implacable, especially once he's riled. He's also a drifter, moving from region to region in every novel, which makes the novels more episodic than long-form in their storytelling. Jack Carr's novels, by contrast, have been weaving a complex narrative tapestry, each novel building on the previous one, and given the prolific pace at which Carr writes, one has to wonder when he's going to burn out.

Both novels, Cry Havoc and Gone Tomorrow, make for very good reads. I normally read Reacher novels only when I learn what the newest streaming-video season of "Reacher" is going to be based on. By contrast, I read Jack Carr's novels whenever I learn he's published a new one. So far, there's only one season of "The Terminal List" and one miniseries ("Dark Wolf," more about eventual betrayer Ben Edwards than about James Reece); "Reacher," meanwhile, will be starting Season 4 soon on streaming video.

So go tuck yourself in and have a read if you're into this testosterone-filled genre. It occurs to me that I've been reading this sort of prose since I was a kid: I used to have several Mack Bolan (The Executioner) novels. There's nothing quite like a 9-mm Parabellum round wetly exploding some bad guy's skull. Maybe that's what fuels my consumption of squirrel- and rat-shooting YouTube videos.