From Publishers Weekly
There have been many books concerning FBI undercover agents on perilous assignments, but this one by a veteran FBI agent goes most of them one better with his full-tilt voyages into the darkest fringes of society. After his training and recruitment into the criminal netherworld, Hamer assumed several identitiesΠ²Πβsuch as drug dealer and contract killerΠ²Πβto penetrate the closed societies of the Chinese, Russian and Iraqi mobs. However, Hamer's controlled theatrics are most compelling as he infiltrates the security-obsessed North American Man/Boy Love Association disguised as an aging pedophile, to crack the group and their extensive international network. The sneak peek into that dank society of chicken hawks is illuminating in its depiction of child sexual abuse. With his practiced lies and disciplined behavior, Hamer is a peerless undercover agent, although his book sometimes breaks its narrative focus and wanders into several cases at once. Still, this book possesses power and conviction without being pretentious or pious. (Sept. 12)
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From Booklist
For a quarter of a century, the author was an undercover operative for the FBI, pretending to be drug dealers, killers, burglars, gamblers, and weapons dealers, among other low-lifes. The culmination of his career was his infiltration of NAMBLA, a secret organization of pedophiles; it was also one of his toughest assignments, due to the potential psychological damage that could be incurred when posing as someone so loathsome. This memoir takes us through HamerΠ²Πβ’s professional life, from his first undercover assignment in 1980 to the NAMBLA case, which exposed this hitherto hidden club to public scrutiny and condemnation. As a writer, Hamer could not be called a stylist: his prose is straightforward and unadorned. But the stories he tells are compelling, dramatic, and often surprising. Readers familiar with such undercover-themed books as Donnie Brasco (1987) will want to add this to their reading lists. --David Pitt