Cry Havoc, the highly anticipated new thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr, will now hit bookstores on October 7th, 2025.
Originally slated for a June 10th release this year, Carr’s first prequel novel, which will follow the events surrounding Tom Reece—the father of his series protagonist and the star of The Terminal List, James Reece—will now land on store shelves this fall.
The announcement came via Carr himself, who took to X, formerly known as Twitter, last night to break the news to his fans.
“CRY HAVOC date push to the right,” wrote Carr. “Bad news (really just ‘news’, relatively speaking): CRY HAVOC is now coming October 7. Good news: Those who have read it say it is their favorite yet. Sincere apologies to everyone looking forward to CRY HAVOC in June, along with my heartfelt gratitude for your patience, understanding, and support.”
Carr went on to say that, “CRY HAVOC is my most intensely researched novel to date. It is packed with action, espionage, and a few surprises and twists along the way. My intent with this book is to honor those who served in Southeast Asia and those who went “across the fence” into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. My goal was to write every sentence through the lens of 1968. I hope CRY HAVOC acts as a portal to that pivotal year, one that was the deadliest and bloodiest of the conflict.
“Thank you again for your understanding and support. There will be more news in the coming months to include audiobook excerpts on the podcast, chapters posted to my website, a killer trailer video that was filmed yesterday, along with gear giveaways and interviews. A Book Tour is scheduled for the fall. I can’t wait to see everyone on the road so I can shake your hand, look you in the eye, and thank you in person. To those who have pre-ordered and those who will, I thank you and appreciate you more than I can express. Onward!”
CRY HAVOC date push to the right.
Bad news (really just “news” relatively speaking): CRY HAVOC is now coming October 7.
Good news: Those who have read it say it is their favorite yet.
Sincere apologies to everyone looking forward to CRY HAVOC in June, along with my… pic.twitter.com/CCTAv4EphO
— Jack Carr (@JackCarrUSA) May 3, 2025
For more on Cry Havoc, keep reading below…
James Reece was first introduced in The Terminal List (2018) and has gone on to star in seven novels to date, including last year’s Red Sky Mourning. He has been portrayed on screen by Chris Pratt in the Prime Video-produced The Terminal List show, and for what it’s worth, may be the most popular action hero in print today. Not since the days of prime Tom Clancy have we seen an author reach celebrity status quite like Carr, whose relevance in today’s pop culture is, arguably, as great as it is in the literary world, where he’s been absolutely dominating bestseller lists the last few years.
To be clear, many writers are beloved, but there’s nothing like a new Jack Carr book hitting stores.
From sellout crowds across the country to high-profile appearances on The Joe Rogan Experience and The Pat McAfee Show, to name a few, readers flock to bookstores to see what Carr has dreamed up for James Reece to deal with in his latest adventure. But now, Carr will go back in time for a different kind of book, though readers need not worry too much about James Reece, whose future was left a little up in the air at the end of Red Sky Mourning, as Cry Havoc will actually star his father, Tom Reece.
For those waiting on Tom Reece, he has arrived, and he has arrived with a vengeance! — Jack Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Tom Reece, who Carr has written about plenty in his books, was a SEAL operator with ties to MACV-SOG. In fact, Carr actually wrote a chapter set in the past that followed Tom in Only The Dead, a book that, while it starred James Reece, centered around a son’s quest to finish what his father—Tom—had started.
“From the outset,” explained Carr in an exclusive statement to The Real Book Spy, “my intent was to create interesting characters that spanned generations in order to both give contemporary characters a history that informed their actions and decisions while also giving me options to explore in future novels. I am sure much of that comes from the influence of the legendary Stephen Hunter, who has given readers multiple generations of Swagger family adventures.”
Carr has long cited Stephen Hunter as one of his favorite authors, which was one of the reasons his fans weren’t surprised when Cry Havoc was first announced last year.
“My first foray into the Reece family lineage is through his father, Tom Reece, at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968. He is on his third SEAL deployment to Vietnam and is now assigned to MACV-SOG when he is pulled into a CIA operation that will set his future course with the Agency. At heart, it is an espionage thriller that takes readers from Saigon and Da Nang, into the deadly A Shau Valley, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the mountains of Laos, to Hanoi, Bangkok, Moscow, Berlin, London and Washington, D.C. “
(Click Play to see the official reveal trailer)
“As an added bonus,” said Carr, “I am able to write a thriller in which I do not have to contend with GPSs in every mobile phone and vehicle, text messages, emails, VPNs, IP addresses, facial recognition, social media, cameras on every corner, drones, advanced satellite imagery and all the other technology that must be worked through when writing a contemporary political or spy thriller where communication, tracking, disguises and aliases are at play. It lets me delve into “old-school” tradecraft and, in this case, the brinksmanship of the Cold War through the prism of the conflict in Vietnam. I started with an idea I thought was more fiction than fact but after months of research and interviews I now believe the underlying plot is much closer to reality than I initially envisioned. What do I mean? Find out when CRY HAVOC hits shelves later this year. For those waiting on Tom Reece, he has arrived, and he has arrived with a vengeance! So fired up to get this one out in the wild.”
Check out the cover art and plot details below.
From the “hottest author on the thriller scene today” (The Real Book Spy), #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr brings the worlds of special operations and CIA paramilitary units into direct collision in the jungles of Vietnam with his explosive new thriller introducing young Navy SEAL Tom Reece, a man torn between the blurred lines and allegiances of the military and the increasingly murky world of intelligence. This is how it all began…
1968. A time of division. A time of civil unrest. A time of war.
Just before the Tet Offensive changes the dynamic in Vietnam, before President Johnson announces he will not run for reelection, before the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, as riots and protests rage across the nation, a spy ship, the USS Pueblo, is captured by communist forces off the coast of North Korea. The crew thought they had destroyed everything of intelligence value. They were wrong.
As a KGB “illegal” elicits information from a high-ranking CIA official, and teams of special operators infiltrating into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam disappear without a trace, an ambitious Soviet advisor launches an ingenious plan with consequences that reach far beyond the battlefields of Southeast Asia, one that will forever alter the world balance of power.
Tom Reece, a SEAL operator attached to the highly classified and shadowy MACV-SOG is about to be thrust into a bloody battle to discover the truth.
From the Kremlin to the White House, from the streets of Saigon to the rugged A Shau Valley, along the paths of Ho Chi Minh Trail and into the secret war in Laos, Navy SEAL Tom Reece has an official mission assigned by Military Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group, but it’s his unofficial mission that might get him killed.
From “master novelist” (Ballistic magazine) Jack Carr comes a new fast-paced and brutally realistic thriller, one that will make you question all you thought you knew about Vietnam, pressing “emotional buttons that other writers wouldn’t dare explore” (The Real Book Spy).
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 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 starring Chris Pratt. He is also the host of the top-rated Danger Close podcast.
Cry Havoc, the first Tom Reece novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr, is now available for pre-order everywhere books are sold.
Praised as “One of the hardest working, most thoughtful, and fairest reviewers out there” by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, Ryan Steck has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). Steck also works full-time as a freelance editor in addition to running TRBS. He is the author of FIELDS OF FIRE, which #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr says “will leave you speechless and begging for more,” LETHAL RANGE, OUT FOR BLOOD, and TED BELL’S MONARCH. For more information, follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and BookBub. To interact with other readers and talk about your favorite books and authors, join The Real Book Spy’s Discord server.