Phillip M Vitti

The Passage: Memoir of a Boston Undercover Cop in the '60s Phillip M Vitti

Marc Notes: An informative and impressionistic account of one Boston Police Department undercover cop's experiences in the 1960s era. Time travel with 'Mike Russo' through the underbelly of organized crime played out against the back drop of Boston's once infamous Combat Zone to the kaleidoscopic and oft violent world of social protest.--book jacket flap. Publisher Marketing: Journey with the author through the labyrinth of Boston's once infamous Combat Zone - a four block area of concentrated crime, vice and pathos. Peer into the murky world and inner workings of organized crime - prostitution, gaming, pornography and bookmaking. Trace the rudimentary beginnings of his undercover personality known as Mike Russo, whose persona would last a decade. Mike Russo would evolve from a flat unidimensional 'observe and report' investigator into a fully immersed and developed character - a free floating, socially conscious, intellectual type with strong feelings against the war in Vietnam and a propensity towards political radicalism. Traits sorely needed for the specialized intelligence gathering that would enable the cops to stay one step ahead of the disruptive elements of the social protest era being violently played out in the streets of Boston and Cambridge. In the end the author would collide with his pseudo-self forcing him to confront his own conscience and choose, not between right from wrong - but right from right. This book ends on a soul-searching and highly dramatic note! He lived this life.