It was ten blocks, and Bo turned on the siren and smacked the magnetic dome light on the roof… the police cars with their flashing lights were scattered like rage. A street full of blinking fists.

I picked this book up on a whim, having never heard of Bo Dietl and his illustrious career as one of New York’s finest. He comes across as what John Walsh would be if he had a badge - a man with a burning hatred for wrong-doing and the confidence in his own ability to do something about it. The numbers are impressive. In his fifteen years with the NYPD, Dietl made over 1400 felony arrests (most cops average 180 in same time span) and had a ninety-five percent conviction rate. As part of a decoy (plainclothes) unit, he was mugged over 500 times. He was stabbed, shot, beaten, run over and assaulted in multiple colorful ways.

I had the best pickpockets in the world try to lift my wallet. But I had an educated ass. I could always feel the hand go in.

Dietl did more than just decoy work, although he had to fight grudges and red tape to get his gold shield. The man was the job. He worked without sleep for days at a time, driven to see justice done. He went face-to-face with Columbian drug lords on Elmhurst Ave and fought the pimps of Times Square. But the book focuses mostly on Dietl’s most famous cases, the Harlem convent rape and the Palm Sunday massacre. These were the most satisfying to him both personally and professionally. He loved protecting the citizens of New York and many reciprocated by plying Dietl with free food, free booze and with their deep friendship.

I wake up the whole neighborhood. The whole neighborhood… I was dancing over the whole neighborhood. I owned it. I was running around like a nut, but that hour was sheer ecstasy. It felt like the whole world was in love with me. For one whole hour.

Many things in these pages were surprising to me. Dietl talks about drinking in bars while waiting to testify in court. About giving detainees beer to pacify them during a delay in transport. He talks openly about beating perpetrators during the takedown and explains that it was the lesser of two evils - he subdued them with his fists because he didn’t want to shoot them dead. It’s certainly my hope that law enforcement is different now than it was in the seventies!

Dietl didn’t always find the NYPD a smooth ride. He wasn’t good a paperwork, he got into trouble for working too much overtime and he didn’t like some of the precincts he was assigned to. He frequently moonlighted as protection for Saudi princes and often found that his brothers in blue resented him for it. Dietl fought turning in his retirement papers for several years when an injury finally made up his mind for him. He went on to own his own business and he eventually consulted on a movie made of his life staring Stephen Baldwin (although as I was reading this, I would see and hear Al Pacino).

I really enjoyed Dietl’s engaging story. I've never sat in a bar and been regaled in style by a blue-collar hero, but that's what reading this book is like. Being about a New York cop, I probably don’t have to warn about the language but I thought I would just in case anyone is particularly sensitive to it. Dietl is capable of expressing himself without using profanity however, being a mostly candid telling, he rarely makes the effort to do so. ( )