Dead Horses

David E. Knop is a retired Marine officer with twenty years of service. He saw two tours in Vietnam as an artillery forward observer and naval gunfire support officer. Dave also worked in the intelligence and logistics fields. As a staff officer, he wrote and edited numerous military operations plans. Dave also authored feature articles for the Field Artillery Journal and the Marine Corps Gazette. In civilian life, Dave produced many electronic and automotive technical manuals for industry leaders such as ViaSat, SAIC, and Computer Sciences Corporation. Dave's work for the Eighth Air Force received an award of excellence in a Northern California Society of Technical Communications competition. Dave's thrillers featuring a former Marine tribal police officer bring the role of spirit warrior to the subgenre of Native American detectives. Dave's first novel, The Smoked Mirror, placed honorable mention in both the Maryland Writers' Association and Reading Writers contests. The second thriller, Mining Sacred Ground, became a Public Safety Writers of America 2013 third place winner, a finalist in the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest, and placed top ten in a Killer Nashville contest. Poisoned by God's Flesh, Dave's third novel, was awarded a bronze medal by the Military Writers Society of America and received Honorable Mention in the 2014 Eric Hoffer writing contest. A fourth novel, Animal Parts, was awarded honorable mention in the PSWA 2017 contest and became a finalist in the 2017 New Mexico – Arizona Book Awards. Dave's fifth novel, Payback, is in the works. Dave is a graduate of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the University of Southern California. An alumnus of Book Passage Mystery Writer's workshops, Taos Institute of the Arts, Maui Writers Retreats, Dave is a lifelong student of Native American studies. Dave resides in San Diego with his wife, two daughters, and a grandson. Email: davideknop@gmail.com Webpage: David E. Knop, Novelist of the Southwest, https://davideknopbooks.com/