Cop without a Badge: The Extraordinary Undercover Life of Kevin Maher »

Screenwriter/Producer/Author Charles Kipps has won an Emmy, a Peabody, and an Edgar Award. His early career as a journalist, included a stint as Features Editor for Variety. He is the author of two non-fiction books, Out of Focus and Cop Without A Badge (recently reissued) and the novels Hell's Kitchen Homicide and Crystal Death (coming September 2010).

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A COP AND KEVIN MAHER? KEVIN DOESN'T HAVE A BADGE. AND HE DOESN'T PLAY BY THE RULES.

Cop Without a Badge tracks confidential informant Kevin Maher as he helps the NYPD, the FBI, and many other law enforcement agencies solve cases that range from robbery to extortion to homicide. In the process, Kevin becomes the highest paid CI the DEA ever had.

But Kevin's motives are more complicated than simply money. Having been arrested for Grand Theft Auto at the age of sixteen, his felony conviction prevents him from being what he always wanted to be: a police officer. So now he's out to prove to himself he truly is what he could've been. A cop. Even without a badge.

Publishers Weekly

Kipps (Out of Focus) deftly labels Maher an ``excitement junkie,'' and the aptness of that term is clear from the first paragraph of this high-speed bio. From a broken home, Maher early became addicted to fast cars, and at 17, driving a stolen car, he led police on a wild chase from the Bronx in New York City to the Catskills. For this he got a prison sentence of up to four years. After escape and re-incarceration, he had the good fortune to encounter detective Jim Doherty, who became a second father to him. He then built a career as a confidential informant for various police departments, the FBI and the DEA. His fascination with fast cars continuing, he met at a drag-racing strip the scion of one of Colombia's drug families and for several years was a serious cocaine addict whose habit wrecked his first two marriages and derailed his career as an informant. Eventually he conquered his addiction and now works for a security firm in New Jersey. From all the derring-do here emerges the portrait of a man who never grew up. First serial to Penthouse. (Feb.)