Book details
Befriend and Betray
Infiltrating the Hells Angels, Bandidos and Other Criminal Brotherhoods
Author: Alex Caine
Befriend and Betray
$11.99
About This Book
Book Details
The Hells Angels. The Bandidos. Asian triads. Russian mobsters and corrupt cops. Even the KKK. Just part of a day's work for Alex Caine, an undercover agent who has seen it all.
Alex Caine started life as a working-class boy who always thought he'd end up in a blue-collar job. But after a tour in Vietnam and a stretch in prison on marijuana-possession charges, he fell into the cloak-and-dagger world of a contracted agent or "kite": infiltrating criminal groups that cops across North America and around the globe were unable to penetrate themselves.
Thanks to his quick-wittedness and his tough but unthreatening demeanor, Caine could fit into whatever unsavory situation he found himself. Over twenty-five years, his assignments ran the gamut from bad-ass bikers to triad toughs. When a job was over, he'd slip away to a new part of the continent or world, where he would assume a new identity and then go back to work on another group of bad guys.
Told with page-turning immediacy, Befriend and Betray gives a candid look behind the scenes at some familiar police operations and blows the lid off others that law enforcement would much prefer to keep hidden. And it offers an unvarnished account of the toll such a life takes, one that often left Caine to wonder who he really was, behind those decades of assumed identities. Or whether justice was ever truly served.
Imprint Publisher
Thomas Dunne Books
ISBN
9781429965576
In The News
“Alex Caine's memoir of his life as a confidential informant is one of the most engaging tales ever told about the deep infiltration of organized crime. His revelations are extraordinary; his story gripping. I couldn't put it down.” —William Marsden, coauthor of The Road to Hell and Angels of Death
“Caine is the ultimate actor, inhabiting roles as a big-time drug dealer, border runner, money launderer, hit man, rock-and-roll promoter--all while working as one of the most audacious undercover informants of all time. He turned infiltrating organized crime into an art form. He could easily have become a master criminal himself. Luckily, he worked for the good guys. Amazingly, he survived his encounters with the Hong Kong Triads and Bandidos bikers and the KKK and has returned to tell his fascinating and nearly unbelievable true-crime story.” —Guy Lawson, coauthor of The Brotherhoods