THE KNIFE

A powerful, dark, and morally provocative debut novel about a U.S. Special Forces unit operating in Afghanistan, written by a former soldier—No Easy Day meets Redeployment…

It's hot and getting hotter this summer in Afghanipakiraquistan - the preferred name for the ambiguous stretch of the world where the U.S. special ops forces are deployed with little outside attention. Team leader Dutch Shaw is missing his late grandmother who raised him. She was the last link he had to civilian life, to any kind of world of innocence. But there's no time to mourn. After two helicopters in a sister squadron are shot down, Shaw and his team know that they're going to be spun up and sent back deep into insurgent territory, where a mysterious new organization called al-Ayeelaa has been attracting highvalue targets from across the region. As Shaw and his men fight their way closer to the source, mission by mission, they begin to realize that their course may have been prepared for them in advance, an not by a welcoming host. Ross Ritchell is a former soldier in a United States Special Operation Command direct-action team conducting classiefied operations in the Middle East. Upon his discharge, he enrolled at Northwestern University, where he earned a MFA. He lives with his family in Illinois.