<p><strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 1); color: rgba(68, 68, 68, 1)">2023 First Place Winner, True Crime, Firebird Book Award</strong></p><p><strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 1); color: rgba(68, 68, 68, 1)">2024 Finalist, Narrative Nonfiction ' True Crime, American Writing Award</strong></p><p><strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 1); color: rgba(68, 68, 68, 1)">2024 Top Ten Finalist, Nonfiction, Bookshelf Award</strong></p><p><strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 1); color: rgba(68, 68, 68, 1)">2024 Second Place Winner, True Crime, Bookfest Book Award </strong></p><p><strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 1); color: rgba(68, 68, 68, 1)">2024 Winner, True Crime, Next Generation Indie Book Award</strong></p><p><strong style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 1); color: rgba(68, 68, 68, 1)">2024 Winner, True Crime, NYC Big Book Award</strong></p><p></p><p><strong><em>A Peek Under the Hood</em></strong> is a true crime exposé of the case that freed an entire inner-city neighborhood from the perils and decay wrought by heroin trafficking. </p><p></p><p>In 1994, DEA Special Agent Michael Pevarnik opened an investigation with his informant, a Vietnamese refugee who infiltrated a string of drug-dealing auto repair shops in Worcester, Massachusetts. His yearlong case, Operation Tune-Up, solved murders in New York; chased a wily fugitive through Puerto Rico; went undercover with cocaine smugglers in Panama; and, most impactfully, exposed the biggest heroin traffickers the old mill town had ever seen.</p><p></p><p>When Worcester's Main South neighborhood was given a voice as a crime victim nearly two years after the virtual elimination of heroin in New England's second largest city-a phenomenon that reduced violent crime, stimulated business growth, increased property values, and improved the quality of life-it was the first time in US court history a community was allowed to give a victim-witness statement, declaring what they, not law enforcement, defined as a victory in the war on drugs. </p>
