Being Uncle Charlie is the intense, intimate and graphic story of one Canadian undercover cop who spent two decades infiltrating organized crime. From Russian and Italian mafias to notorious biker gangs, Bob Deasy gained access to and the acceptance of criminals who most cops in any country would never encounter or arrest, let alone befriend.
Bob Deasy had an illustrious twenty-three year career with the Ontario Provincial Police. Using little more than his quick wits, natural confidence and a deft mental equilibrium that allowed him to stay three chess moves ahead of his quarry, Deasy was the secret weapon behind some of the signature crime busts in Canadian history. Infiltrating the Outlaws Motorcycle Club and the Russian and Italian mobs, he also single-handedly set up international import-export businesses, faked contract hit jobs and executed one of the largest drug buys in OPP history. He also perfected the now controversial "Mr. Big" technique of posing as a crime kingpin to solicit unwitting confessions from suspects in long-dormant cold murder cases--a tactic he defends as he practised it, and with which he enjoyed a 100% success rate.
Being Uncle Charlie is a nail-biting ride--sometimes comic, always entertaining--that reads like a one-man history of modern crime, told through the ground-level, insider's perspective of a cop who was able to blend in with the unsavoury, the desperate and the diabolical.

Bob Deasy's profile page

Mark Ebner's profile page

• Short-listed, Arthur Ellis Award for Best Non-Fiction

BOB DEASY spent over two decades deep undercover for the Ontario Provincial Police. He recently retired as a Detective Inspector and resides north of Toronto.
MARK EBNER is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author. His latest collaboration, We Have Your Husband (Berkley True Crime, 2011), was recently adapted for a popular Lifetime Network movie of the same title.

“Riveting and rougish…. Being Uncle Charlie is a compelling snapshot of the cat-and-mouse nature of undercover policing.”
—Winnipeg Free Press

“It’s unreal…an incredible book!”
—Rob Breakenridge, NewsTalk 770 (Calgary)
 
“It’s remarkable…. You have to read this book.”
—Mutsumi Takahashi, anchor, CTV News (Montreal)
 
“A compelling, gripping and intense book.”
—TheCommentary.ca