Adrenaline Rush: The Adventures of an Undercover Cop

by Andy Bell

Andy Bell is a police constable with a problem. It's not that his chief hates his guts. It's not that he's an undercover cop living in a brothel and sleeping with the enemy in hopes of cracking a dope ring. It's not even that most of her friends are violent criminals who would kill him slowly if they found out who he was. No - Andy Bell's problem is that he is enjoying it too much. And he doesn't see why it has to end. Raw, exciting and gritty, this first-hand account of life as a narcotics undercover cop will keep you guessing to the very end.

256 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Micheal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Andy Bell, not the Oasis bass player and Ride guitarist, was New Zealand's first undercover cop. Now, I would have thought that in New Zealand in 1973 there would be no need for cops, let alone undercover ones. Yep, turns out I was wrong. Wellington in the era of bell bottoms and big ties was a hotbed of drug dealers, crime syndicates, prostitution rings, violent communists and psychopathic anarchists intent on overthrowing the government and committing mass murder.
Okay, so far so good. However, it's Bell's writing that lets this down. It's not that it's terrible it's just that, rookie errors that a good editor should have picked up aside, DC Bell fails to really impress on the reader the dangers of the job, choosing instead to focus on his sexual conquests and escapades (some of them very gleeful and graphic indeed) and make light of the psychological toll such a job takes. But what do I know, maybe it had no effect on him - he writes like it didn't. But I know from reading Damien Marrett's far better memoirs that it probably did.
The book also promises hair raising thrills from "roller coaster start to helter skelter end", though on this it fails to deliver. The ending is rather anticlimactic, though it sets itself up for a sequel that, far as I know, has yet to materialise.

[Charlie]

Very good book interesting the whole way through

[Andre Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome book, took you into his life and day