Discount Price: $22.95
Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN num: 9780743283939
ISBN number: 0743283937
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: April 23, 2008
Publishing house: Scribner
Sale Popularity Level: 1068828
Studio: Scribner
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
In 1968, 1 percent of the New York City Police Department was female. When Kathy Burke joined the NYPD's ranks in June of that year she was one of only ten women in a class of 950 recruits. But the determined Burke had no doubt that she was born to be a cop, and in her twenty-three-year career she rose to be the most highly decorated female detective in the NYPD's history. Detective is her story.
By turns caustic, funny, and matter-of-fact, Burke describes what it was like for a young woman to be surrounded by often hostile male officers and the uphill battle she fought to prove herself and earn their respect. But earn it she did. From her beginnings as an undercover cop making drug buys on New York's most dangerous streets to posing as Mrs. Patz to capture extortionists in the Etan Patz case to investigating the Mafia, Burke worked in some of the NYPD's most elite units on its most high-profile cases, eventually rising to the rank of detective very first grade, the very highest in the detective bureau.
Burke vividly portrays every aspect of a cop's experience, taking readers from the discos where she flirted with drug dealers to the halls of Congress, where she testified about drugs and corruption with a paper bag over her head (to protect her undercover persona), to a deserted street in Queens where a tragic shooting would forever change her career and her life. Burke is brutally honest in her criticism of NYPD leadership and corruption within the department, in her accounts of the physical and emotional toll taken by the job that she loved, and in her descriptions of the sacrifices -- sometimes even the greatest sacrifice of all -- that cops must make.
Detective is a revelatory and inspirational story of life lived without apology, of stubborn courage, and of a woman who triumphed over doubts, recrimination, and personal tragedy to truly become 'one of New York's Finest.'
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
This story is amazing from the very first page to the last. From Burke's rough childhood through her riveting years as a cop, it is impossible to put the book down. Hirschfeld delivers some powerful writing and allows every character to come across as they were, for better or for worse.
A female SERPICO story if there ever was one.
Rated by buyers -
This story kept me in the edge, I couldn't put the book down. Thankfully it wasn't 1,000 pages, I stayed up all night just to finish it. ALL NYPD cops should be mandated to read this book.
Rated by buyers -
"Detective" belongs on the same shelf as Robin Moore's "French Connection" and Peter Maas's "Serpico." Kathy Burke's career with the NYPD was exciting, contentious, tragic--yet ultimately groundbreaking and triumphant. Burke battled crooks, killers, corrupt cops, nasty superior officers, and her own demons. That she had the guts to deal with all that--and more--is the fuel that propels this compelling book.
Rated by buyers 
-
This is a straight forward, kick you in the balls book of what it is like to be a woman cop.
The book concludes with a revelation of the two NYC rogue cops, Eppolito and Caracappa, who sold their souls to the Mafia and thus affected so many people's lives with their corrupt actions. This officer, Kathy Burke, was adversely affected in lifelonghorrible way. There's a great deal of undercover stories detailed here, sexual harrassment, love between cops--both plutonic and sexual. Officer Burke describes so much, including receiving the medal of Honor from Mayor Koch.
But in the end, she concludes, she has her self esteem and dignity. For the reader, its those two good for nothing turncoat cops that betrayed all that was good around them.
Find other books like this one:
