The Knife

December 8, 2014
Former U.S. Special Operations Command direct-action soldier Ritchell mines his own experiences on the ground in the Middle East in this debut novel about a close-knit squadron deployed to hunt down and eliminate members of
al-Ayeelaa, a secretive and increasingly volatile terrorist cell in Afghanistan. Now on his 10th deployment in “Afghanipakiraqistan,” team leader Shaw no longer pines for normal civilian life, especially because he’s romantically unattached and the grandparents who raised him are dead. Instead, he prefers horsing around with the guys in the oppressive desert heat, listening to fellow soldiers Hagan and Dalonna’s
stories (the former obsesses over women with “huge tits” and the latter has G-rated memories of his wife and kids back home). The soldiers’ crass jokes and chummy banter verge on stereotype, but tension-filled scenes of raids on enemy combatants offset the stale mood. When Shaw loses men in an especially brutal confrontation, the questions he asks himself in the aftermath (Does he feel like a murderer? Were his kills worth it? Would anything ever change?)—despite being old hat and too rushed—resonate. Overall, however, the novel lacks cohesion: a few pages supplying background on the al-Ayeelaa leader, for instance, are inadequate and read like an afterthought. Agent: William Callahan, Inkwell Management.

December 1, 2014
An account of the long stretches of boredom and short bursts of adrenaline that make up a Ranger team's deployment in Afghanistan.Former Army Ranger and combat veteran Ritchell delivers a war story about the mind-numbing periods of waiting, the stress of battle fatigue, the ingeniously idiotic ideas that fill downtime and the spine-tingling moments when life is ever so fragile. When we meet Ranger team leader Dutch Robert Shaw, he's ruminating over coffee about the loss of his last family member, the grandmother who raised him. His reflection is cut short by the call for an immediate redeployment to an ambiguous stretch of battle-torn Afghanistan. Unlike many frenzied accounts of war, this story flows at a comfortable tempo with plenty of time to describe the poker games and discussions about higher education that fill the long flight into a war zone. Once on the ground, the five-man Ranger team spends its time in the FOB (forward operating base) packing seemingly endless amounts of chewing tobacco and devising childlike dares. There's no rush to get to battle scenes, but when they arrive, Ritchell describes night operations, "snatch and grab"s and the elimination of HVTs (High Value Targets) without false bravado, while still broadcasting the immense skill possessed by these soldiers. He draws the high drama and moral complexity of the Rangers' life on the front lines from a place of narrative distance, allowing the reader to fill in the unstated emotions of Shaw and his team, giving their story great poignancy. A beautiful book about the soldiers who sit on the front lines of the U.S. military machine.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2014
A small team of special-operations command operators are airlifted from somewhere in the southern U.S. to a remote forward operating base somewhere in Afghanipakiraqistan. Their assignment: hunt down and eliminate terrorist networks. Each hop will generate new intel, which will lead to additional hops, and ultimately to the leader of a new network known as al-Ayeelaa. But it may be that al-Ayeelaa is leading the operators into a lethal confrontation. First-novelist Ritchell was an SOC operator, and he sketches a curious portrait of a military force devoid of rank and ritual. Beyond names, we know little about the operators except that when they are not on a hop they spend nearly all their time shooting their weapons, cleaning them, lifting weights, and chewing tobacco. Chaotic battle scenes are often rendered in jarringly matter-of-fact sentences. After-action reviews praise speed and precision of violence. Ritchell may be accurately portraying intensely focused men who cultivate opacity, but his terse style diminishes the impact of what is otherwise a vividly rendered military thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2014

A former soldier with a U.S. Special Operations Command team in the Middle East, Ritchell offers you-are-there fiction about the fighting in what he has dubbed Afghanipakiraqistan. When two helicopters in a sister squadron are blasted out of the sky, Dutch Shaw's team is forced deep into insurgent territory to track a shadowy new group called Al Ayeelaa.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2015

In this debut novel of contemporary war, an army special operations unit is sent to Afghanistan to root out a mysterious terror cell. Dutch Shaw is part of an elite special operations unit assigned to take out high-value targets. On this mission, they're after the leader of a shadowy new organization called al-Ayeelaa. The novel follows Shaw and his fellow soldiers through the alternating boredom and terror of their mission, focusing as much on the rough camaraderie of the men in the unit as the battle action. All goes relatively well until a tip provided by a "cooperative" captured Afghan (who turns out to be the head of al-Ayeelaa) leads the men into a trap. Ritchell, a former special operations soldier, explores both the macho swagger of these hardened soldiers and their more introspective moments in an almost journal-like manner. VERDICT While not short of action scenes, the novel is at its best when it probes the soldiers' misgivings about the job they're asked to do and the fine line between killing enemy combatants and murder that can exist in a battle zone where civilians and soldiers are intermingled. A simultaneously tough and thoughtful work. [See Prepub Alert, 8/4/14.]--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.