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The Last Undercover: The True Story Of An FBI Agent's Dangerous Dance With Evil (2008)

by Bob Hamer(Favorite Author)

3.69 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1599951010 (ISBN13: 9781599951010)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Center Street

review 1: Interesting memoir of a retired 26yr-undercover FBI agent. This guy has some strong personality traits and opinions as I’m sure anyone in his profession would (as a coping mechanism, if nothing else). He doesn’t seem to be glorifying himself, but rather telling a long tale which focuses on his last undercover assignment - infiltrating NAMBLA. The story feels long in certain parts, but Hamer wisely includes ‘flash backs’ to other moments in his undercover career throughout the book to keep things interesting.It was interesting to discover, with the exception of his active Christian faith, his main fictional character in "Enemies Among Us” (a later fictional work) is basically himself. Having read these two works back to back, I even recognized certain words and ph... morerases used to describe both men. The fiction novel is a bit shorter and has a strong plot to pull you quickly through the novel. This memoir takes a while to get through, but you end up with a realistic view into the life of an undercover agent which is sometimes tedious and unglamorous.There is a certain ick factor to the world of pedophiles, but Hamer does a good job in sanitizing the novel and summarizing the conversations & actions taken by the pedophiles. You will understand what they are doing & saying, but there is no graphic language or images to haunt & disturb the reader. I was left wondering about the crazy reality pedophiles create to justify their actions where black is white, where man/boy love is healthy and natural. It made me wonder if I could stomach Hamer’s role ... could I pretend to be one of them for an extended period? Overall, this memoir illustrated a good lesson for our society at this moment: people will justify their own actions and fight for their right to engage in desired behaviors. Don’t lose sight of your own moral compass and what you know to be right & wrong.
review 2: The inherently interesting subject matter of this book (undercover FBI investigations) is somehow made pretty boring, primarily because of the structure of the book, which goes all over the place. The extensive flashbacks to earlier investigations in Bob Hamer's career are probably meant to enhance the literary quality of the memoir, but I just found them confusing. The subject matter is quite icky as well, as for Hamer's last undercover assignment he pretended to be a pedophile member of NAMBLA. The amount of detail provided regarding that lifestyle is a bit excessive. It's also quite sloppily copy-edited. I'm not super-snooty about typos, although moreseo when it comes books than blog posts or goodreads reviews, but I can even forgive some in books. This book has a ton of dropped words as well as some egregious misspellings ("sensative," for one). Little touches of anti-Catholic bigotry also creep in, which further marred the book for me.I think the problems with this book are more the fault of the publisher than the writer; this could have been amazing with better editing. less

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