Another book about undercover cops in biker gangs

I guess I did­n’t get enough cops-and-rob­bers (OK, meth deal­ers and gun­run­ners) when I read William Queen’s *[Under and Alone]([canonical-url:node/715])* four years ago. I was also look­ing for an ebook with which to test out Ama­zon’s Kin­dle for iPhone read­er soft­ware. I want­ed some­thing rel­a­tive­ly light in case I did­n’t like the Kin­dle read­er. I haven’t tried the actu­al Kin­dle but when the Kin­dle read­er for the iPhone came out I fig­ured I ought to try it out.

Jay Dobyn­s’s *No Angel* is sim­i­lar in many ways to *Under and Alone*. Law enforce­ment offi­cer infil­trates bik­er gang: it’s an old sto­ry, like Romeo and Juli­et, right? Any­way, Dobyn­s’s book is the bet­ter one for sev­er­al reasons.

First, Dobyns dis­plays emo­tion­al can­dor that Queen nev­er did. While Queen lost me with his high-and-mighty dis­dain for the lowlifes he looked down on, Dobyns’ descrip­tion of his expe­ri­ences seems more authen­tic. Dobyns’ sto­ry includes a dark spi­ral into his assumed per­sona, and accounts of encoun­ters where he real­ly sound­ed iso­lat­ed and exposed.

*No Angel* was more engag­ing also because Dobyns went into more detail about the oper­a­tional orga­ni­za­tion. Instead of a sin­gle hero­ic ven­ture into ene­my ter­ri­to­ry like Queen’s case, Dobyns described a team effort with oth­er under­cov­er agents, infor­mants, oper­a­tional plan­ning, dif­fer­ences of opin­ion regard­ing strat­e­gy, per­son­al­i­ty con­flicts and inter­a­gency pol­i­tics. *No Angel* tells what appears to be a more com­plete story.

The strain on Dobyn­s’s mar­riage and rela­tion­ship with his chil­dren was addi­tion­al­ly grip­ping. Not only did it tell of the price paid by under­cov­er oper­a­tives, it increased the stake the read­er has in the sto­ry. Not only is it nat­ur­al to care about the well-being of the pro­tag­o­nist, see­ing him in both envi­ron­ments made him seem much more vul­ner­a­ble. A man with pres­sure from many dif­fer­ent direc­tions has to be more like­ly to make a fatal mis­take, and the wrong out­come is more than just the fail­ure of a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, it would be a fam­i­ly tragedy.

Either book will pass the time, but if you’re going to choose one of the two, I’d go for *No Angel*.

As far as the Kin­dle for iPhone, it worked all right, but it is clear­ly an ear­ly effort. Fea­tures com­mon to oth­er ebook read­ers are entire­ly miss­ing on the iPhone ver­sion of the Kin­dle read­er. There’s no fea­ture for chang­ing the fore­ground and back­ground col­ors of the read­er, which meant that the screen was always too bright for read­ing in the dark.

A fea­ture that eRead­er has that seems minor is the option to switch the default ges­tures for page turn­ing and for dis­play­ing the inter­face chrome. Kin­dle for iPhone does a tap to bring up the inter­face options and a swipe to turn the page. I pre­fer the tap to turn the page because it’s faster and does­n’t require much coor­di­na­tion. It’s very easy to hold the iPhone in one hand and tap tap tap to get through the pages. Swip­ing requires a sec­ond hand or else a very prac­ticed sin­gle-hand­ed swipe skill. It’s just not as con­ve­nient, which adds up over the course of five thou­sand screen­fuls of a book.

Nev­er­the­less, Kin­dle for iPhone shows promise if they will just remain open to improv­ing their user inter­face and pay atten­tion to user expe­ri­ence. These things can be for­giv­en in a first release, but I’m like­ly not to be so for­giv­ing if these short­com­ings aren’t addressed in a sub­se­quent version.