Matt Burgess reads from "Uncle Janice"

"Like Richard Price and the late, great Elmore Leonard, Matt Burgess is one of those cool, quick and funny writers who can turn a seemingly routine crime caper into something special.”-- Carl Hiaasen, bestselling author of Bad Monkey

"Uncle Janice is a lowdown masterful contribution to Urban American lit, charismatically written with terrific sly humor and a joyous dead-on ear. An addictive read, one of those books you wish would never end."--Richard Price, bestselling author of Lush Life and Clockers

Twenty-four-year-old Janice Itwaru is an “uncle”--NYPD lingo for an undercover narcotics officer. A New York City cop who can last eighteen months in Narcotics, without getting killed or demoted first, will automatically get promoted to detective. Itwaru is at month seventeen. Ambitious, desperate for that promotion, she hits the sidewalks of Queens in her secondhand hoochie clothes, hoping to convince potential criminals--drug dealers, addicts, dummies, whomever--to commit a felony on her behalf. And things aren't any easier back at the narco office, where she has to keep up with the bantering lies and inventively cruel pranks

of her fellow uncles while coping with the ridiculous demands of her NYPD bosses.

With an ailing mother at home, her cover nearly blown, quota pressures from her superiors, and rumors circulating that Internal Affairs has her unit under surveillance, Janice is running terribly short on luck as her promotion deadline approaches. Now she has to decide which evil to confront: the absurd bureaucrats at One Police Plaza, or the violent drug dealers who may already be on to her identity.

Bursting with the glorious chaos of the New York City streets, Uncle Janice is both a deeply funny portrait of how undercover cops really talk and act, and a compelling story of their crazy, dangerous, and complicated lives.

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Matt Burgess is the critically acclaimed author of Dogfight, A Love Story. A graduate of Dartmouth and the University of Minnesota's MFA program, he grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. He now teaches at Macalester College.