Honor for Sale: The Darkest Chapter in the History of New York's Finest

Altering characters, details and dates, Kelly, a former police officer, offers a partially fictionalized account, spanning the years 1969-1976, of the theft of 500 pounds of narcotics from the NYPD's Property Clerk's office. The stolen drugs had a street value of $82 million and included 112 pounds of pure heroin seized during the famed ""French Connection"" case. Kelly, who acknowledges that ""some scenes and dialogue are invented,"" writes with admirable energy, and his potent dialogue crackles with street authenticity. Kelly was 23 when he joined the NYPD's Narcotics Bureau in 1967. He graduated to the Bureau's elite SIU (Special Investigating Unit) two years later and was a highly decorated detective by the time he left the force in 1978. With numerous name changes, Kelly's tale focuses on SIU detective ""Joseph Graziano,"" who replaced suitcases of drugs with flour during various visits to the Property Room over three years. As investigations of corrupt SIU detectives got under way in 1972, Graziano died under suspicious circumstances. At the time, his death was labeled a suicide, but Kelly asserts he was murdered. A few months later, thousands of breeding red flour beetles revealed the suitcase switches, and the subsequent grand jury indictments of former SIU detectives brought headlines. The events related here were previously described in Gregory Wallance's 1981 Papa's Game, which opens with Wallance announcing: ""The people are real. No names have been changed."" Kelly doesn't display enough dramatic flair to make his book fly on narrative alone, and by cloaking the truth, he robs his book, interesting as it is in parts, of its authority. (Aug.)