Under and Alone or Autobiography

Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America's Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang

Author: William Queen

In 1998, William Queen was a veteran law enforcement agent with a lifelong love of motorcycles and a lack of patience with paperwork. When a “confidential informant” made contact with his boss at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, offering to take an agent inside the San Fernando chapter of the Mongols (the scourge of Southern California, and one of the most dangerous gangs in America), Queen jumped at the chance, not realizing that he was kicking-starting the most extensive undercover operation inside an outlaw motorcycle gang in the history of American law enforcement.

Nor did Queen suspect that he would penetrate the gang so successfully that he would become a fully “patched-in” member, eventually rising through their ranks to the office of treasurer, where he had unprecedented access to evidence of their criminal activity. After Queen spent twenty-eight months as “Billy St. John,” the bearded, beer-swilling, Harley-riding gang-banger, the truth of his identity became blurry, even to himself.

During his initial “prospecting” phase, Queen was at the mercy of crank-fueled criminal psychopaths who sought to have him test his mettle and prove his fealty by any means necessary, from selling (and doing) drugs, to arms trafficking, stealing motorcycles, driving getaway cars, and, in one shocking instance, stitching up the face of a Mongol “ol’ lady” after a particularly brutal beating at the hands of her boyfriend.

Yet despite the constant criminality of the gang, for whom planning cop killings and gang rapes were business as usual, Queen also came to see the genuine camaraderie theyshared. When his lengthy undercover work totally isolated Queen from family, his friends, and ATF colleagues, the Mongols felt like the only family he had left. “I had no doubt these guys genuinely loved Billy St. John and would have laid down their lives for him. But they wouldn’t hesitate to murder Billy Queen.”

From Queen’s first sleight of hand with a line of methamphetamine in front of him and a knife at his throat, to the fearsome face-off with their decades-old enemy, the Hell’s Angels (a brawl that left three bikers dead), to the heartbreaking scene of a father ostracized at Parents’ Night because his deranged-outlaw appearance precluded any interaction with regular citizens, Under and Alone is a breathless, adrenaline-charged read that puts you on the street with some of the most dangerous men in America and with the law enforcement agents who risk everything to bring them in.

The New York Times - Gary Kamiya

With instincts and savvy honed by years of undercover work -- and a healthy dose of good luck -- Queen gets out of this and many other tight places, and finally succeeds in gathering evidence that sends at least 18 Mongols to federal prison. Few readers will shed tears for them. Yet Queen comes to appreciate the Mongols' good qualities -- deep loyalty and love for one another -- and he becomes increasingly torn at the realization that he will have to betray men who have become closer to him than most of his law-enforcement colleagues.

Kirkus Reviews

A federal agent earns his colors with the Mongol motorcycle gang while working undercover. For more than two years in southern California, Queen worked his way up through the feudal/corporate hierarchy of the notorious Mongols, for whom "murder and mayhem have become simply a lifestyle choice." They ran drugs and trafficked in guns to fill the group's coffers; they got their kicks from assaults, gunfights, stabbings, and other hideous, random acts of violence. Queen's narrative voice is a bit intimidating: gruff and unflinching, like a mean stare. This doesn't come as a big surprise, however, considering that the Special Forces veteran spent 16 years at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, working undercover to buy cocaine from the Crips in Los Angeles and machine guns from neo-Nazis in West Virginia. Queen is a natural storyteller and explainer, and his material offers top-shelf adventure. As he went about trying to gather evidence against the Mongols, he felt the disorientation that comes with long, deep cover. He began to appreciate the gang's camaraderie-they consoled him when the woman who raised him died, while his partners in the BATF never mentioned it-but was snapped back to his senses when they went out and stomped some poor slob to death. Much of Queen's time was spent trying to figure out how to thwart a murder or avoid participation in dope-taking. The episodes describing those efforts are packed with great intensity, as so much hangs in the balance. In spare moments, he tried to give his sons a real life, though that didn't happen until he surfaced to testify, when the boys were relocated along with his ex-wife to a different state under new names. A dark andtwisted world, fully realized. Don't be surprised if it runs to bestsellerdom. (16-page photo insert, not seen) Film rights to Mel Gibson/Icon Productions, with Gibson to produce, direct, and star; author tour

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Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

Author: Mahatma Gandhi

Personal account of the life of the man who freed India from colonization through the Satyagraha — nonviolent protest — movement. His early boyhood life, legal studies, purification, and ultimate salvation of his homeland is carefully recounted in this inspiring and critical work of insurmountable importance.