A gritty memoir that gives readers a cop’s perspective on Chicago crime.
A retired Chicago police officer who served as a SWAT sniper, gang specialist, and undercover agent recounts his time on the force.
Growing up, author McCarthy dreamed of joining the Chicago Police Department like his father and great-grandfather. He wanted to clean up the meanest streets of the city. As a street cop, McCarthy thrived on patrolling the worst neighborhoods in Chicago at the worst times of night. Wanting more, he eventually transferred to a special operations team and served as a SWAT sniper and a gang specialist before teaming up with the FBI on a special task force to combat Asian crime. Whether disguised as a female prostitute or as a drug addict, McCarthy often seemed fearless. Still, he makes it clear that as a cop, one is often scared—one just must face those fears every day. The debut author doesn’t pull any punches describing some of the disturbing things that he witnessed during his many years as an active-duty police officer in one of the country’s most volatile and vibrant cities, including damaged drug addicts, rotting bodies, and the murder of a fellow SWAT officer by a shooter holding an elderly woman hostage. Chapters focusing on particular investigations, like one involving a triple murder and a gang known as the Maniac Latin Disciples, are packed with memorable details told in a distinct voice that will remind readers of films like The Departed. Occasionally, some awkward stereotyping creeps into his recollections; e.g., “Most citizens have no idea how nuts and insane some people are when they’re buzzed up and out of control....Surprisingly, women can be some of the worst.” However, despite these unfortunate moments, McCarthy’s voice is that of one of the good cops out there, speaking on behalf of his often underappreciated fellow officers and the high levels of stress they encounter on the job.
A gritty memoir that gives readers a cop’s perspective on Chicago crime.Pub Date: April 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9966666-0-2
Page Count: 265
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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