24 year-old Janice Itwaru is an "Uncle"NYPD lingo for an undercover narcotics officerand the heroine of the most exuberant and original cop novel in years.

On any given day, Janice Itwaru might be found trolling the streets of Queens for drugs. Janice is an "uncle"-an undercover narcotics officer-trying to meet the impossibly high quota of drug busts needed to make detective, or be sent back down to uniformed patrol. So Janice is out there in her secondhand hoochie skirt, trying to get potential drug dealers-criminals, addicts, dumb kids, whomever-to commit a felony on her behalf. Other days are spent in the "Rumpus Room" at the precinct, trying to keep up with the bantering lies and inventively cruel pranks of her fellow uncles while coping with the insane demands of the big bosses. With an ailing mother at home, her cover nearly blown, four more buys to get her gold shield and rumors circulating that Internal Affairs has her unit under surveillance, Janice is running very short on luck as her quota deadline approaches. Now she has to decide which evil to confront: the faceless bureaucrats at One Police Plaza, or the violent drug dealers who may already be onto her identity. Bursting with the glorious chaos of the streets of New York, Uncle Janice is an uproariously funny portrait of how undercover cops really talk and act, and a compelling story of their crazy, dangerous and often nonsensical lives.

Matt Burgess