Escaping the Kill Zone: My Journey from LAPD's Zebra Unit to Undercover Federal Operative in the Las Vegas Mafia

Shootin' Newton Publishing, LLC, 2022. NEW and unread in near PERFECT condition but for a crease to the bottom corner of the rear cover (like you sometimes find in any new book store). Flat spine. NO other creases. Square and tight. NO owner's or bookplate. Pages are fresh, crisp, clean and unmarked - obviously never read. NO underlining. NO highlighting. NO margin notes. Photo illustrated. Bound in the original pictorial wraps, with photo of the author on the back. From the rear cover: "'Man’s Life Resembles Spy Movie' Headline in San Pedro News Pilot. Monday, December 7, 1981. Mike Powell’s blood and guts stories go far beyond his days working as a plainclothes officer in one of LAPD’s Zebra Units—a unit tasked with tracking down violent criminals in South Central L. A. "Shootin’ Newton" was notorious for its many police shootings including the Black Panther and Symbionese Liberation Army shootouts. Two of Mike’s four shootings occurred in Newton. Mike and his partners tracked down murder suspects, bank robbers, and a serial killer: a killer of young boys. Mike’s police stories take us back to the days when cops were allowed to be cops, and when police chiefs like LAPD’s Ed Davis and Daryl Gates sent former military, "warrior cops" into the streets to hunt down violent criminals. Mike also served as a key undercover operative for both the LAPD, undercover as a woman, and the federal government, undercover in the MAFIA, and he lived to write about it. If you’ve seen the movie Casino, then you have seen the mobsters he brushed shoulders with. Mike ended his investigative and undercover career after he received several death threats, and his home was set ablaze while he and his first wife, Manette were in it." From Kirkus Reviews -- "'A retired cop takes on killers, con artists, and pornographers in Powell's action-packed memoir. The author revisits his career in law enforcement, security, and investigations, starting with his stint in the Los Angeles Police Department during the 1970s as a patrolman and operative in the plain-clothes Zebra unit—he saw everything from burglaries to gang shootouts to the grisly rape and murder of a young boy, which he traced to a teenaged serial killer. At the age of 28, he became a bodyguard for Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt; he depicts the porn mogul, who used a wheelchair after being injured by a sniper's bullet, as a paranoid but roguishly charming drug addict, and his security detail as a snake pit of intrigue. (He alleges that Flynt's security chief plotted to kill him and was responsible for an arson attack on his house after he quit.) Powell then became a private investigator taking oddball cases. These included an assignment from Flynt's rival, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, to dig up evidence that Flynt bribed a judge to win a favorable decision in Guccione's libel suit against him; the haunting murder of a young mother found bludgeoned to death in a Louisiana swamp; and a picaresque adventure infiltrating a boiler-room operation, run by a mobster called Fat Tony, that sold shoddy products under counterfeited brand names over the phone. The author paints a vivid portrait of policing and of himself as an aggressive cop who loved the adrenaline—he once pursued a burglar onto an 18-inch-wide high-rise ledge—but was driven by the horrors he witnessed to booze, pills, and therapy. His vigorous, evocative prose blends colorful character sketches and investigative savvy ("because a screwdriver was used to stab Catherine in the chest seventeen times, and not a knife or another sharp-bladed weapon, I was leaning toward the reasoning that this killing was not premeditated") with hair-raising, cinematic tension ("I reached out to feel the man's carotid artery, when suddenly a shadow came over me from behind and in a calm voice said, 'Put down your gun, or I swear to God I will kill this baby!'"). The result is a captivating read. A rousing true-life crime saga delivered with old-school.…