Don't Shoot! We're Republicans!: Memoirs of an FBI Agent Who Did Things His Own Way

Writer and former FBI special agent Owens recounts 30 years as a G-man in this funny, thought-provoking memoir. Fresh out of law school, Owens signed on with J. Edgar Hoover's all-white, all-male bureau in 1969. Presenting his work as a series of telling anecdotes, Owens often finds the comedy in his job (the standard punchline involves surprisingly easy-to-find fugitives) as well as the thrills, such as a stint with the FBI SWAT team, putting down a 1987 Atlanta prison riot started in part by Cuban inmates formerly held in Castro's prisons (a '94 riot followed in Alabama). Along with the tedium, ironies and tragedies of his decades in the field, Owens also details his work on one of the most shocking cases in U.S. criminal history, the Atlanta child murders in the early '80s. With a vet's cogent perspective, Owens produces a compelling and well-rounded retrospective of a life in criminal enforcement.