Reviewed by Eileen Quinn Knight, Ph.D. Profiles in Catholicism
Ken Strange has offered us a fascinating and gripping book on the intersection between law enforcement and life. In reading the book you will ponder about movies or videos you’ve seen and your own life experiences. The text is comprehensive concerning the life of the author. He includes the abbreviations and there meaning, he also includes notes and a bibliography, there is a section on commentaries and acknowledgements. He presents a complete picture as possible. The entire book is difficult to put in one review. In 1986 while still a graduate student in Glendale, Arizona, The author was recruited by the FBI as part of their language program, in his case, Spanish. Not that it took much to recruit the author since law enforcement was already in his blood. In time, the author, graduated and accepted a summer internship with the US State Department at the American Embassy in Muscat, Oman. The Embassy proposed that my wife receive a salary for filling in for the vacationing Embassy nurse while the author, an unpaid intern, toiled on a country-specific financial research project in the Embassy’s economic section. Within several months I had landed a job as an international credit analyst for one of New York City’s largest banks, Manufacturers Hanover Trust. After several months and having barely passed the credit analyst exam, Strange was wrestling with the ennui and the countless calories from all those banker’s lunches with our Middle East correspondent bank counterpart in New York. After a year and a half the author received his probationary letter from the “Bureau” inviting him to join the FBI New Agents Class at Quantico, Virginia commencing in 1989.
During our three-month tenure at Quantico, the FBI class was trained to skillfully use and qualify on a pair of Bureau-issued weapons – the Smith and Wesson Model 13 as well as 12 gauge Remington Model 870 shotgun. Fire arms training was conducted at least three times per week at the outdoor range. When the class arrived at Quantico, the Bureau was still smarting over the FBI Miami shootout of April 11, 1986 between FBI agents and two of the “baddest” most violent criminals in US law enforcement history. This section of the book is filled with details about this happening. The class of FBI agents had an encounter with Jodie Foster as she was filming the Silence of the Lamb. The author gives a plethora of details about this time and what occurred. The training at Quantico had taught the FBI class to take care of each other, to watch each other’s back and never quit on a classmate or a partner. The author states:” There are moments in life seminal moments when we make choices we either applaud or regret. To this day, I still don’t understand. Here was the opportunity of a lifetime to meet a best-selling, world-famous novelist and shoot the breeze about the Bureau over a lunch he was most likely buying. And although it seemed hand to believe, perhaps. Mr. Clancy might use me as an FBI agent character in one of his thrillers.”
There are many twists and turns in this book as the author unveils his work in regard to a Jihad, Global Fraud and the Cartels. It is an astonishing story that takes a detailed reader to uncover. It is a great book for all those who provide protection for all in our country.