This absorbing account of Mark Felt's FBI career, from the end of the great American crime wave through World War II, the culture wars of the 1960s, and his conviction for his role in penetrating the Weather Underground, provides a rich historical and personal context to the "Deep Throat" chapter of his life. It also provides Felt's personal recollections of the Watergate scandal, which he wrote in 1982 and kept secret, in which he explains how he came to feel that the FBI needed a "Lone Ranger" to protect it from White House corruption.
Felt's role as "Deep Throat," the insider who led reporters to break the Watergate scandal, is the excuse for this book, but the longest and best part is his memoir of life as a straight-arrow FBI careerist who rose nearly to the top, a Hoover loyalist so devoted to the Bureau that he helped undo a president to preserve its independence and integrity. Michael Prichard's voice is not the prettiest, but he's skilled and experienced, and his no-nonsense but expressive reading serves this tough, principled, and conservative author well. Sections about the revelation of Felt's secret and his old age are tacked on but do add an interesting dimension. W.M. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
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