Peek Under the Hood: Heroin, Hope, and Operation Tune-Up

2023 First Place Winner, True Crime, Firebird Book Award

2024 Finalist, Narrative Nonfiction & True Crime, American Writing Award

2024 Top Ten Finalist, Nonfiction, Bookshelf Award

2024 Second Place Winner, True Crime, Bookfest Book Award

2024 Winner, True Crime, Next Generation Indie Book Award

2024 Winner, True Crime, NYC Big Book Award

A Peek Under the Hood is a true crime exposé of the case that freed an entire inner-city neighborhood from the perils and decay wrought by heroin trafficking.

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.

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.