Special Agent
 Candice DeLong & Elisa Petrini
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2001 Hyperion NY USA
  ISBN: 0786867078

Dear Rebecca: “You reviewed my book SPECIAL AGENT: MY LIFE ON THE FRONT LINES AS A WOMAN IN THE FBI 2&1/2 years ago. The movie of that book will be premired on the Lifetime cable channel on 10/6/03 at 9pm, eastern & Pacific.” C. DeLong

My Life on the Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI. From tailing terrorists to going undercover as a gangster's moll to carrying out the manhunt for the Unabomber in Montana, she reveals the dangers & rewards of a 20 year career as a field profiler in the nation's most powerful law enforcement agency.

Special Agent is a fine, funny & furious read! Elisa Petrini has taken Candice DeLong's loping life & made a memoir of a modern woman's career in one of the most entrenched Old Boys' Clubs ever founded upon these hallowed shores!

It helped a lot that Candice DeLong had been a psychiatric nurse for years when she decided to up the ante & bring a little action into her life. Divorced with a son to care for, this single mother joined the FBI at a time when political correctness was merely a mote in God's eye.

Gender, notwithstanding, Candice carved out a niche for herself in that all-male establishment & began to prove her worth, sometimes by happenstance & sometimes by sheer determination, smarts & flexibility.

Interwoven with the stories of the cases on which she worked & the comraderie & ribaldry of her co-workers are spun fragments of her private life. Of being a Mom asked to Show & Tell at school. Of plugged-up plumbing & Rockwellian Midwestern domesticity.

Over time, this Special Agent earned a reputation for consulting on crimes of a certain kind. She became an intuitive & respected interviewer with cops on rape & domestic violence cases - this no-nonsense, plain-speaking, be-hatted member of the “Gruesome Twosome” - fooled many a criminal into confessing or revealing clues which brought about convictions.

Get the skinny on John Wayne Gacy; the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit & John Douglas, the father of that discipline or Roy Hazelwood, the preeminent authority on sexual criminality; the Kemper case; agent-training programs at Hoover High, aka Quantico; a rookie's first days in the field; the Wonderful World Police; Utopia in LaGrange, Illinois; The Master Class; the Unsub & NCAVC; The Bad Guy that got just a bit too close & the Cocaine Cowboys who took everyone for a ride.

Lend an ear to Girl Talk in which a brainstormer meets a “company man” & Ice Woman chills out Loverboy & the Candy Store caper sweetens the pot!

& then Candice DeLong got the chance to transfer to San Francisco & encountered The Beast - the Unabomber investigation where her profiling skills were put to the test.

Special Agent reads well - moving right along from case to case, from trainings to street work; from rapes to murders; terrorists to gangsters. From early days of divorce & gender-resistance to blossoming years of partnerships & reputation.

For a look inside the everyday world of a female FBI agent, you have got to read Special Agent & do check out my Interview with Candice DeLong - it's a blast!
(08/05/01)

Rebecca