What do you call a thug with the legal power to do almost anything they please? If you were living in New York City in the 1960s, you would call them a narcotics officer. 90 Church is the gripping true crime memoir of former Federal Bureau of Narcotics Agent Dean Unkefer.

In 1960s New York City, the world was a very different place. 90 Church: The True Story of the Narcotics Squad from Hell gives us a shocking look at New York’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics at this time and place in history. You’ll be on the edge of your seat as you hear Agent Dean Unkefer’s tale of wanting to be one of the good guys who tried to do his part to clean up the streets of New York, only to unwittingly find himself working for one of the most significant and most ruthless gangs in the city: the FBN.

Narrator Keith Szarabajka helps to provide a first-person account of Agent Dean Unkefer’s life as a federal agent. The story takes us from his first days as a young agent walking into the building on 90 Church St and joining the FBN to seeing himself become more like the drug dealers and Mafia figures he intended to put away. Follow along as Dean sinks deeper into the same abyss that swallowed many of his fellow agents.

90 Church is a great audiobook that can sometimes be maddening, as you’ll hear of the law enforcement officers who were little more than criminals with badges. Many of them provided the blueprint for how not to handle the eventual war on drugs. As we go deeper inside America’s notorious first narcotics squad, you’ll see why the team housed at 90 Church Street was the rot at the core of the Big Apple. It’s a wonder former Agent Dean Unkefer could make it out alive.