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90 Church

Inside America's Notorious First Narcotics Squad

Audiobook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks

Mad Men meets The Wire in this gripping true-crime memoir by a former agent at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1960s New York.

Before Nixon famously declared a "war on drugs," there was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

New York City, mid-1960s. The war in Vietnam was on the nation's tongue—but so was something else. Clandestine and chaotic, but equally ruthless, the agents of the bureau were feared by the Mafia, dealers, pimps, prostitutes—anyone who did his or her business on the streets. With few rules and almost no oversight, the battle-hardened agents of the bureau were often more vicious than the criminals they chased.

Agent Dean Unkefer was a naïve kid with notions of justice and fair play when he joined up. But all that quickly changed once he got thrown into the lion's den of 90 Church, the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, where he was shocked to see the agents he revered were often more like thugs than lawmen.

When he finally got the chance to prove his mettle by going undercover in the field, the lines became increasingly blurred. As he spiraled into the hell of addiction and watched his life become a complex balancing act of lies and half-truths, he began to wonder what side he was really on.

90 Church is both the unbelievable memoir of one man's confrontation with the dark corners of the human experience and a fascinating window into a little-known time in American history. Learn the story of the agents who make the DEA look like choirboys.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 16, 2015
      Some readers will take a skeptical view of this memoir of Unkefer’s four years with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (from 1964 to 1968), given the publisher’s disclaimer, which notes that the volume is based on the author’s best recollections and that he has “rearranged the details of events and chronologies in order to facilitate the narrative.” The federal agent initially comes across sympathetically, as his first day on the job at the bureau’s Manhattan office is an embarrassing comedy of errors, and he begins his career as an idealistic crime fighter who refuses to sign off on a false report. That phase doesn’t last long, as Unkefer is quickly influenced by his crooked colleagues, becoming a corrupt and violent drug addict who cheats on his wife. He managed to justify his behavior by the results he and his fellow agents achieved; he looked forward to betraying drug dealers, even those he slept with, because “There were no more bothersome thoughts about right and wrong.” But the apparent honesty of his warts-and-all self-portrayal will be offset for some by his rationalization of his work for the FBN: “We worked in an environment of desperation, in a war that threatened to destroy America. The agents did what had to be done.”

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  • English

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