‘A Peek Under the Hood’ is a NYC Big Book Award winner!

A Peek Under the Hood: Heroin, Hope & Operation Tune-Up by Michael Pevarnik has garnered another award! This gripping memoir is a 2024 NYC Big Book Award winner in the category of True Crime.

“A Peek Under the Hood is a true crime investigative adventure that travels from the streets to the jungle in the quest to reclaim an inner-city neighborhood's stolen quality of life,” the reviewer writes. “In 1994, an altruistic DEA agent and his atypical informant, a noble soul who'd endured the injustices of war and forced labor camps in Vietnam, set out to make a difference in Worcester, Massachusetts, a textile and tool manufacturing hub of the Industrial Revolution now known for its production of heroin, crack, and crime. Infiltrating a string of drug-dealing auto repair shops in the gritty Main South neighborhood, "Operation Tune-Up" then journeyed into an underworld to solve murders in New York; tangle with computer chip armed robbers from California; chase a wily fugitive through Puerto Rico; go undercover with cocaine smugglers in Panama; and, most locally impactful, expose the biggest heroin traffickers the old mill town had ever seen.

“A history-making case that stimulated the revitalization of a depressed city, A Peek Under the Hood tells the inside story of a community's victory in the war on drugs.”

Congratulations, Michael!