I’ll admit, when I first saw that James Patterson had a new one out, I figured I knew exactly what I was getting: short chapters, plenty of cliffhangers, and a fast weekend read. But Rocket’s Red Glare hits totally differently, and a huge part of that comes down to who he wrote it with.

Patterson teamed up with Matt Eversmann—the retired Army Sergeant Major whose real-life actions in Somalia were the basis for Black Hawk Down. When you pair a master of suspense with a guy who actually knows what it feels like to lead elite operators under heavy fire, the result is an absolute powerhouse of a book.