Ghost: My Thirty Years As an FBI Undercover Agent

McGowan, a three-decade FBI veteran, narrates his impressive career in this intense memoir. Raised by an alcoholic Irish cop in a rough northeastern Massachusetts industrial city, McGowan left home in 1979 to attend college in Florida. Afterward, he returned to New England and worked as a cop in Burlington, Vt., for several years before being accepted into the FBI in 1988. McCowan became one of the rare special agents trained to work undercover and given multiple assignments. He takes great care in depicting the risks he took as an agent in more than 50 undercover cases, working on international drug investigations, tracking Italian and Russian mafia members (he used a wire while meeting with Matty Guglielmetti of the New England–based Patriarca crime family), and investigating Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán (his office set up “a major international drug deal with the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel” in Mexico) and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. McGowan gives readers a thrilling insider’s view of being an undercover FBI agent, “the most exciting and challenging job in the world.” [em](Oct.) [/em]