A gritty, straightforward memoir about corrective determination written from both sides of the law.
A Queens native recounts his evolution from drug dealer to decorated veteran police officer.
Though he was raised to be a law-abiding, productive member of society, the streets had a different plan for former NYPD deputy inspector Pegues. He intensively details his childhood as a brother to four older sisters and the son of a functioning alcoholic father within a family barely subsisting on welfare. Desperate for easy money, in the early 1980s, when he was 13, the author began selling drugs. With his likable, smooth-talking demeanor, his illicit deals became more lucrative as the caliber of drugs escalated—but so did the violence. When events reached deadly proportions, even then, Pegues believed “it’s never too late to turn your life around” and his own “exit plan” included enlisting in the Army after high school graduation. His memoir’s subsequent sections detail the author’s time as a member of the NYPD, where diligent police work was often met with disillusionment and criticism within the tacitly segregated “lily white” precinct to which he was assigned. Complementing the brash experiences Pegues illustrates as both a drug dealer and a civil servant, his memoir is ornamented with raw street vernacular, lending it authenticity. As it wraps up, however, his empowering story darkens and discourages with discontent. Though the author retired in 2013 after an eventful and ambitious, rank-climbing 21-year career, his final chapters are world-weary and indignant, as he accuses regional media and the police force at large of discrediting him and stripping his legacy of its honor. More distressing are his allegations about the questionable motivations of the 67th Precinct, the resurgence of broken windows policing, and the dismantling of the urban inner-city youth programs and anti-violence efforts he’d established. A multimillion-dollar lawsuit remains pending.
A gritty, straightforward memoir about corrective determination written from both sides of the law.Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1049-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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