A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior

As he did in Down by the River, Charles Bowden takes the reader deep into the shadow world that is the war on drugs. This book reads like a well crafted literary mystery novel - think Graham Greene or Scott Turow -except it's true. If you read both River and Shadow, you'll get some idea of the personal toll the drug war takes on the cops and their families, and also wonder how they can go out and fight this evil day after day and year after year. Especially since the street agents are the ones who pay the biggest price, while the "suits" play the career game. Joey O'Shea could be the model for Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice.

In the beginning chapters I judged the style as a bit aloof. It does not take long, however for Charles Bowden's wordcraft and narrative style to hook you into the surreal life Joey O'Shay leads. A Lone Efficient Wolf, down a long hall....in an office, deep inside the belly of the DEA. The Eagle Scout agents will not even walk past his door. It does ones spirit good to know they are not all twisted right wing suits. I highly recommend this book for those who think they lead a strange life. O'Shay lives in a dimension all his own, and one largely of his own careful making. I hope he allows us more when he retires.

In January of 1935, shortly before Steinbeck sent off his manuscript of "In Dubious Battle," he wrote, "But man hates something in himself. He has been able to defeat every natural obstacle but himself he cannot win over unless he kills every individual. And this self-hate which goes so closely in hand with self-love is what I wrote about. This books is brutal. I wanted to be merely a recording consciousness, judging nothing, simply putting down the thing. I think it has the thrust, almost crazy, that mobs have." What does this have to do with Bowden's latest book? Everything and nothing. He is a poet trapped in a journalist's psyche, and this is no more evident than the opening of this book. I think the same could be said of Steinbeck who approached the world scientifically through metaphor. I would have enjoyed this, a conversation amongst Bowden, Abbey, Ricketts, Steinbeck, hell, throw in Joe Campbell. Buy this book and learn about the animal within us all. An animal that purrs while ripping the flesh of a gazelle.

One definition of insanity is that a person keeps doing the same thing over and over even after he knows that it won't work. I have met people like Joey O'Shay who have such a deep seated drive to wipe out the drug business that they almost couldn't function doing anything else. Popeye Doyle of French Connection fame was one. I've also seen them reach the point where perhaps they have been shot a time or two, perhaps they have looked at all the drugs that the French Connection stopped from comming into the country ($32,000,000) doesn't mean that drugs are any harder to get. (In fact police tell me that the drugs on the street are of higher quality and lower price than ever before.) Then like Joey O'Shay they begin to question the futility of our never ending war on drugs. And somewhere along there Mr. O'Shay you'd better find a way to leave this life behind. I do not profess to know the answer to the drug problem, but, Guys, this isn't working. As you might guess, in this book Joey O'Shay is a cop on the undercover drug beat. He's being very successful, but the people he puts away are replaced immediately. He's involved with another huge drug deal. He's having a problem understanding that winning the battles he is fighting isn't winning the war.

Bowden's latest sheds light on a dark subject-the life and times of Joey O'Shay, a man who fought on the front lines of this thing we call the war on drugs for the past twenty-plus years. When I say dark, I mean dark. I found myself closing the book to escape-to make sure the world of comfort I now inhabit was still there. But then I was drawn back for more, like some kid peering through fingers at a scary movie, wanting to see, yet not wanting to see, because I know that this is real: the people are real, the blood also, the deception, the lies, the callous disregard for life and family and love, and all those ruined lives, not the least of which is the life of Joey O'Shay. Bowden digs deep into the mind of Mr. O'Shay and forces the reader to see things most would rather avoid-how those on the cutting edge of this war start out good-hearted, well-intentioned people and then are forced to commit evil acts or lose at the game. Each of these acts creates wounds to mind and soul until nothing is left but pain, scars, and awful spirits that torment a man who at his heart may be a good person. Over time, O'Shay begins to doubt that what he does is effective or the cause just. Two problems: he is so damned good at his job and he knows nothing else. So he continues to fight this war with almost suicidal abandon. But he doesn't believe in suicide and he's either too good or too lucky to lose. He looks for death but death is not to be found. All around him, men he considers better than he fall, but the bullets aimed his direction miss the mark, his lies and deceptions go undiscovered and he is left to endure nights of pain, misery, and tortured dreams, dreams that he alone must bear. Bowden is fearless in his excavation, going where most will not tread and the subject of the book is also to be commended for allowing us to see into this world, for he is in fact is the source of the information and also participated in the writing. My only regret is that he cannot reveal his true identity. I think the book will be even more powerful should he choose to do so.