Hot Shots and Heavy Hits: Tales of an Undercover Drug Agent

From Booklist
The author's memoir of his years as an undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency functions to some degree as a history of the DEA. Doyle joined the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) in 1971 and one year later was transferred to the newly formed DEA. He spent his professional life on the streets of Boston, infiltrating the narcotics underworld, cultivating informants, and going up against some of the country's most dangerous drug dealers. It might not have been the most pleasant lifestyle, but it sure does make for exciting reading. Doyle tells his story as though he were writing a novel, packing it with dialogue, action scenes, and suspense. But this stuff actually happened. Many people write about the "war on drugs," but Doyle shows it to us in all its graphic detail. Students of American politics will also be fascinated by the author's chronicle of an agency in the making, as the DEA shifts from idealistic new enterprise to full-fledged bureaucracy. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
The mean streets of Boston in the 1970s played host to a nefarious underworld of pimps, pushers, and addicts, and Paul "Sully" Doyle was there. From Kenmore Square hippies to South Boston junkies to Combat Zone prostitutes, this undercover operative with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration met every type of unsavory character in town in his fight to bust violent rings of dope, coke, and smack dealers during a turbulent era in the city’s history. Now Special Agent Doyle bluntly chronicles the riveting, true stories from his years on the inside. Known on the street by his alias, "Paulie Sullivan," he recalls his rookie days, trying to infiltrate the criminal drug world under the tutelage of his veteran partner, through his coming of age as an experienced narc—sharing his keen observations on ruined lives, personal peril, and government red tape along the way. A former prizefighter not at all shy about punching his way out of trouble, the author divulges a candid, worm’s-eye-view of the drug war with all its blemishes and glories. With abiding humanity and graphic detail, the memoir richly describes exploits with junkie stool pigeons and hooker informants, college burnouts and Chinatown mobsters, ghetto pimps and violent thugs, bureaucratic obstacles and uncooperative foreign governments, successful busts and brushes with death. Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, LSD—no illegal substance failed to tempt those seeking the ultimate high, resulting in the long nights, sudden danger, and uncertain outcomes that faced Sully and his partners. Combining gripping action with perceptive commentary, this unvarnished snapshot of one agent’s experiences undercover adeptly captures the violence, futility, and endless frustration of the war on drugs. As engrossing as a fiction thriller, Hot Shots and Heavy Hits provides a rare glimpse into a harsh world unknown to most of us.

About the Author
Paul E. Doyle served as Special Agent in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and is currently Chairman of the New England chapter of the Association of Former Federal Narcotics Agents. He lives in the Boston area. Peter Kirby Manning is the Elmer V. H. and Eileen M. Brooks Professor of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, and the author of Narcs’ Game and Policing Contingencies.


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Stiffly composed, unpersuasive account of the author's drug-enforcement work in Boston. Doyle asserts that the story of his years as an undercover agent "needs to be told. . . . The myth that experimental use of illegal drugs is a harmless rite of passage should not go unchallenged." Perhaps, but such sanctimoniousness, which pervades the text, ultimately limits his tale's effectiveness. Following a stint in the army, Doyle was recruited by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (the DEA's precursor) in 1971, when the BNDD was seeking "experienced soldiers" to serve as undercover street agents. He divides his memoir into six long chapters, each delving into a different facet of the nefarious urban drug scene in a time and place Doyle recalls as swarming with thugs, bikers, mobsters, naive swingers, and the tattered remnants of the counterculture. "Chinatown" details Doyle's infiltration of that neighborhood's heroin scene; an addicted prostitute eventually introduced him to a local kingpin. "Informant" describes the role of snitches in undercover drug work: "I came to despise most of them. . . . Nobody likes a rat." In "Bad Acid," the agent cozies up to a hippie ("I have connections all the way to Amsterdam, Hong Kong, San Francisco") who steers him to the so-called "Acid King," resulting in the takedown of a major LSD manufacturing operation. Throughout, Doyle finds himself increasingly appalled by the undercover milieu, meeting sweet young college students who soon overdose on heroin and brutish drug dealers whose attempts to dupe him are met with fisticuffs. The square-jawed tone, reminiscent of Dragnet, is often unintentionally humorous: ethnic and cultural stereotypes abound,and the agents spend their downtime getting hammered in bars. Doyle's overwritten prose is strewn with adverbs, and his dialogue is stiff. Furthermore, the simplistic narrative fails to convey these operations' complexity, portraying unbelievably dumb criminals who literally throw themselves at the G-men. Doubtless there is an exciting, informative tale to tell about drug crime in the '70s-but this isn't it.


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