A COP'S SON

A former government agent shares the thrilling details of his storied career.

Strange’s father was a veteran New York City deputy police chief, and the author followed in his footsteps to work at three distinguished U.S. government agencies. The FBI recruited Strange in 1986, when he was an Arizona graduate student, due to his Spanish-language skills, and he later began a summer internship at the U.S. Embassy in the Middle East. In 1989, at the age of 34, he became an FBI agent with the Joint Terrorism Task Force; he left his wife and twin daughters behind in New Jersey for a physically and mentally rigorous stint at the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia. (At the time, Jodie Foster was visiting, observing classes for her role as an FBI trainee in the film The Silence of the Lambs.) He was thrust into his first case as a solo lead investigator, tasked with locating an Irish national with knowledge of the murder of a British army officer. This case sets the tone for the memoir’s rousing remaining sections, which delineate his time at specific government agencies: the FBI, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Department of Justice. Armchair spies are sure to be thrilled by the author’s accounts of his career highlights. For example, his time with the FBI involved foreign counterintelligence and counterterrorism work; his years with the international development office involved fraud investigations; and his Justice Department work dealt with fighting drug cartel operations. He also provides meticulous details of the three stages of his career; for instance, he tells of how, as a fraud investigator, he learned how American foreign aid is dispensed to developing countries and how it can become entangled in fraudulent schemes. Strange fortifies his account with interviews from other agents, which adds depth and perspective to an exciting, and sometimes unsettling, remembrance. In the end, his account feels much like the plot of a spy novel told in dramatic and specific detail.

Readers receive a fine overview of law enforcement professions in this informative and exhilarating memoir.