by William Queen
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Product Description
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 they shared. 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.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Average Customer Review:
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 Great Story, 2008-09-12
This is a great story, what surprised me was that it was not one sided at all. He even recalls a time when police were, lets just say, not acting as they should be. Great read, took only a few days, I recommend it for anyone, law enforcement or not.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Awsome, 2008-08-15
I really enjoyed the book. Being a member of the law enforcement community and also a Harley rider, it was hard to put down. A good read. Buy it.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
UNREAL, 2008-07-15
This is a story every bit as fascinating as Donnie Brasco. Should also be a movie. Living undercover as a Mongel member for two years with those dirty drunken drug users had to be an awful extistence. Or maybe it was fun. However it was, it is a great read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
talk about courage ..., 2008-07-04
as with most books i've read, there is always something i see or hear that piques my interest in a topic/subject matter creating a domino effect that leads to obsessive reading. this seems to be the case here: "gimme shelter" led to sonny barger's "hell's angel" which led to the "gangland" television series and then to searching amazon.com for books about outlaw biker clubs, starting with "under and alone".
the first chapter of this book was such an effective teaser that it actually fooled me into believing the book was ghost-written due to the author not surviving his undercover assignment ... it worked, because i couldn't put it down.
the thought of a law enforcement officer having the courage to take such an assignment is one thing ... to follow through with that assignment and actually become a full-patched member of such an organization is simply amazing. even more impressive is the fact that queen does such an excellent job of taking the reader along with him ... a true "fly on the wall" perspective throughout the book.
every chapter contains moments where you feel as if queen wouldn't survive his assignment and you almost breathe a sigh of relief when oftentimes, a random moment of good fortune is all that saves him.
what makes "under and alone" such a good read is that the action never lets up ... it is nothing but a continuous series of battles: the battle to hide his true identity from a group in which every member is a potential murderer, the battle to portray himself as outlaw biker material yet not participate in criminal activity, the battle of being a father to his kids and maintain their safety during/after the assignment, the struggle of actually developing a fraternal relationship with men who he will eventually be sending to prison and the constant battle with the expected ineptitude of the agency responsible for keeping him alive. the best battle of all, however, is the continuous grief queen endures from one particular mongol ... "red dog".
i found myself constantly flipping to the pictures in order to place a face with the name of those mongols he writes about ... even "red dog".
the book left me with a feeling of apprectiation that there are people out there willing to do such dangerous work voluntarily. my only regret is that there is understandably no "where are they now" chapter because i would really like to know how certain mongols personally felt about queen and the success of his undercover work.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Required reading if interested in motorcycle gangs, 2008-06-27
Billy Queen is clearly an amazingly smart and tough guy. His tale of inflitrating the Mongrols, moving from 'Hang Around' to 'Prospect' to Treasurere and then Vice President of the local chapter is fascinating and well written. And it will quickly disabuse you of any notion that the the Mongols are OK guys have chosen their own path. While some people may have been OK when they joined, Billy makes clear the gang and its members are all to happy to hurt and kill with little or no reason.
Things the book does really well: Give a feel for day to day life in the gang, outline historical background to the Mongols/Hells Angels flue, give a sense of Billy's double life- knowing his gang friends would kill him at the drop of the hat, and that a large chunk of ATF would rather see everything he'd risked his life for throw away then chance the smallest public embarrassment.
The things I found lacking: Would have to liked to know even more about the gangs structure and the relationship between the head chapter (Mother) and the local chapters, would have liked to see more detailed sketches on even more of the members. Still, these are pretty trivials issues.
If you are interested in motorcycle gangs this book is required reading.
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