90 Church

March 16, 2015
Some readers will take a skeptical view of this memoir of Unkefer’s four years with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (from 1964 to 1968), given the publisher’s disclaimer, which notes that the volume is based on the author’s best recollections and that he has “rearranged the details of events and chronologies in order to facilitate the narrative.” The federal agent initially comes across sympathetically, as his first day on the job at the bureau’s Manhattan office is an embarrassing comedy of errors, and he begins his career as an idealistic crime fighter who refuses to sign off on a false report. That phase doesn’t last long, as Unkefer is quickly influenced by his crooked colleagues, becoming a corrupt and violent drug addict who cheats on his wife. He managed to justify his behavior by the results he and his fellow agents achieved; he looked forward to betraying drug dealers, even those he slept with, because “There were no more bothersome thoughts about right and wrong.” But the apparent honesty of his warts-and-all self-portrayal will be offset for some by his rationalization of his work for the FBN: “We worked in an environment of desperation, in a war that threatened to destroy America. The agents did what had to be done.”

March 15, 2015
A grim, fevered memoir of pre-Drug Enforcement Administration anti-drug warriors raising havoc in New York City. Unkefer argues that the little-known Federal Bureau of Narcotics was crucial in staunching the flow of hard drugs into the country before it was merged with another department in 1968: "The bizarre and cunning way that they fought the Mafia to a standstill made them legendary." However, because he builds the narrative around disguised characters and dramatic reconstruction, without clear discussion of actual cases, this feels more like pulpy fiction than the history it represents. The colorful first-person voice endeavors to portray a noirish group of rule-breaking tough guys, yet they come off as a strange combination of a drunken fraternity and Nixonian dirty-tricks squad. Unkefer paints the upper-level administrators as pompous and naive and claims that the real power lay with two agents: Dewey, a goofy, Mickey Rooney type who was also a skilled assassin, and Michael, a master manipulator who observes, "Stop the drugs. That's all anybody cares about. No one cares about the law, or us....They take all the credit. We do the dirty work." They plunged the earnest but increasingly damaged (and eventually cocaine-addicted) young Unkefer into undercover work, where he repeatedly stumbled into horrific encounters with killers and junkies: "There was death, misery, and shooting every day. I had tried to ignore it since my first day on the job." Following a series of increasingly labyrinthine cases against upper-echelon mobsters and their inner-city dealers (which inevitably ended in lethal shootouts), there was an investigation of the author's squad for their malfeasance. Yet the tale abruptly ends with a cleaned-up Unkefer being offered a promotion prior to the DEA's formation, which he refused. "Today there is little recorded history of 90 Church," he concludes. "The agents did what had to be done." Though entertainingly readable in a grimy sort of way, this is more a tangle of sex, violence, and betrayal than a serious true-crime narrative about this little-discussed era.

May 1, 2015

Before there was the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), there was the little-known Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). During the 1950s and 1960s, Americans feared two enemies: communism and illegal drugs. Unkefer wanted to fight for truth, justice, and the American way but got a rude awakening at the FBN. One of the locations for the FBN in New York was 90 Church St., hence the title of the book. The author was in a unit called Group 2 and found that to combat organized crime and drugs, he had to live the lifestyle. Slowly, he was drawn into drug culture and setting up people to be killed, just like his fellow agents were doing. With the body counts climbing, it's hard to determine the good guys from the bad. After four years of being an agent for the FBN, Unkefer quit. Despite bringing down five Mafia families, the FBN was terminated in 1968 owing to its controversial methods. (It was absorbed by the DEA, FBI, and CIA.) This memoir reads like a fast-paced novel and therein lies the problem. Unkefer writes that he changed names and events to protect the identities of his colleagues, and there are no dates for the meetings that took place. The agency no longer exists, records have disappeared, and there's no way to authenticate the author's claims. VERDICT Despite its problems, public libraries should purchase this book as a source of information about the FBN and its trampling on individuals' constitutional rights; Universal Pictures is planning a related movie.--Michael Sawyer, Pine Bluff, AR

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2015
90 Church Street is a federal office building in Manhattan. In the 1960s, it was home to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which had been established in 1930. In 1964, a new agent joined the FBN: Dean Unkefer was young, raw, eager to make a difference; he'd always wanted to be an FBI agent, but the FBN was the next-best thing. Or so he thought: as Unkefer relates in this revealing and involving memoir, he was soon mired in internecine battles within the bureau, being asked to lie on official reports, fighting to get meaningful assignments. As we watch the author transition from a naive young agent to a disillusioned veteran, we see him kill his first man; build a corruption case against some of his own colleagues; and watch as his own bad choices lead to the breakdown of his marriage. The book has the same feel as Peter Maas' Serpico (1973) and Robert Daley's Prince of the City (1978), both nonfiction accounts (later turned into popular films) of cops who struggled to keep their moral and ethical equilibriums. For anyone interested in true crime from the cop's point of view.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)