Jack Carr's Cry Havoc — Did This Le Carré Fan Finish It?

I'm Shane Whaley — a self-confessed "guile over guns" spy fiction reader who has always preferred le Carré's slow burn spy novels to military firefights.

So what happens when a Le Carré fan picks up Jack Carr's Cry Havoc, a 550-page Vietnam War action thriller written by a former Navy SEAL?

Welcome to the Spybrary Rodeo — the brand new Spybrary feature where I pick up a book outside my comfort zone, or by a new-to-me author, give it a fair crack, and tell you exactly how many pages I stayed on for.

Sometimes I bail early.

Sometimes I go all the way to the final page.

Today's book is Cry Havoc by Jack Carr. 550 pages. Lots of guns. Not my usual territory. Did I finish it? Keep listening to find out.

In this episode:

What the Spybrary Rodeo is and how it works

The secret MACV-SOG unit running deniable missions in Vietnam in 1968

Why Cry Havoc is NOT your typical action thriller

The speech that stopped me cold

The spy fiction ingredients hidden inside this action thriller — GRU, moles, honey traps and the USS Pueblo The brilliant le Carré and Fleming passage that tells you everything about Jack Carr as a writer