The QUALITY OF THE INFORMANT

Charles Carr #4

by Gerald Petievich

In The Quality of the Informant , Charles Carr, T-Man, depends heavily on informants in his pursuit of pushers, passers, and makers of "paper" - all those in the thriving business of counterfeiting. Informants are as much a part of the seamy, violent Los Angeles underworld as are the crooks they inform on, and they are crucial to Carr's effort to track down Paul LaMonica, a smooth thug whose skill at manufacturing paper is matched by his murderous amorality.

There are a great many victims in the bloody chase LaMonica leads Carr, a trail that runs from L.A. to Houston to San Diego to Ensenada, Mexico - and the informants are among them; informing is a dangerous game. As readers of Gerald Petievich's earlier books know, the excitement of the pursuit is matched by the vivid authenticity of the gritty world he depicts. Conventional morality is irrelevant in this world, whether for the crooks or for the lawmen - though this taut novel is indeed a powerfully moral tale.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Gerald Petievich belongs to that tiny group of writers who came to crime fiction from careers in law enforcement. He has been an Army counterspy and a U.S. Secret Service agent, using his real life experiences to achieve verisimilitude in his fiction. His novels are known to come as close as any in the mystery- and-thriller genre to a genuine realism. Three of his novels have been produced as major motion pictures.

Gerald grew up in a police family. His father and brother were both members of the Los Angeles Police Department. He attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey and later served in Germany as a US Army Counterintelligence Special Agent. As Chief of the Counterespionage Section, Field Office Nuremberg, he received commendations for his work during the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In 1970 he joined the United States Secret Service where as a Special Agent he spent fifteen years engaged in duties relating to the protection of the President and the enforcement of Federal counterfeiting laws. It was during a long-term Secret Service assignment in Paris, France that Petievich discovered the works of Per Wahloo & Maj Sjowall, Graham Greene and John le Carre, and decided to become a writer. Later, while serving in Los Angeles as the US Secret Service representative to the Department of Justice Organized Crime Strike Force, Gerald's schedule consisted of rising at 4 AM to write before going to his government office.

In 1985, Gerald left the Secret Service to pursue his writing career full-time.

Reviews

[Maria Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this 1985 novel, which reads very much like a typical noir detective novel, you are viewing the story as it progresses of two T-men who want to solve a case that doesn't just involve fraudulent paper passing (fake bills, etc.) but also involves a series of unsolved murders, all connected to a specific individual, Paul LaMonica, who has never been identified in photos or connected to the crimes, but these detectives have a hunch of his involvement because of the ties to the associates who have taken the fall. When reading this novel, you have to realize that this is pre-internet days and most records are not easy as available as now in 2020. So researching associates, travels, and criminal records involved actual conversations. Granted some of the tactics used in this novel won't fly by today's standards, but they fit the style of the era. The crime in this novel, being committed by Paul LaMonica is a forgery of traveler's checks, which he intends to get the traveler's check insurance company to pay for the "return" by putting up a scam story of a former mob associate who was a master forger, himself, but now deceased, had left a pile of forged travelers' checks equal to $100,000 if put out to be cashed. They show the insurance security agent, a copy of a real travelers check, that LaMonica had stolen and then reprinted in his hidden place in Mexico. He intends to get a least $50,000 in cash from the insurance company to buy into a drug buy that he and a partner Teddy Mora would be able to sell for much more on the streets. He includes in this scam a former female associate to pose as the former girlfriend of the mob associate. She takes some coaxing because she already did time for passing fakes on a former job and doesn't want to go back to jail while he goes free. Unknown to her, the current boyfriend Mr. Cool was a paid informant for one of the agencies watching for drug activity, but LaMonica had a suspicion. This LaMonica person was a very cold-blooded individual and he always removed any witnesses who have seen him, so none have survived living if they do anything that hints of unmasking his identity. But these two detectives unearth every stone, which also included a collaboration with the chief of police named Rodriquez, who has his own personal agenda in helping the detectives. The method of police tactics used by the Mexican police is brutal but effective in getting the necessary information. There is a bit of ironic humor in this novel when the two detectives go through their debriefed session and spoil the agent in charge's ability to behave perfect "No-waves" in paperwork because of what they had to do to get LaMonica. Good fast read.

[Josh Bates · Rating 4 out of 5]

The kind of focused, scoped crime stories we don't see much anymore. It's a procedural, but not obsessively so. Lived-in characters, slick exposition, and a criminal counterfeiting angle that avoids the plot saturation of most caper tales.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

***1/2