The Pena Files: One Man's War Against Corruption and the Abuse of Power

Octavio Pena was born in Mexico in 1941 and migrated to the U.S. in his early 20s. After quitting a few dead-end jobs, he answered an ad in the New York Times looking for people to work part-time for Lynch International, a large private-investigation firm, and immediately found his true calling. Pena quickly became a star at the agency, and his autobiography is filled with enough derring-do to make James Bond look like a sissy. Whether he's infiltrating a band of Rastafarians in Jamaica to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a wealthy American, or battling the mob to collect $5 million that one of its members owed to Northville Industries, Pena's exploits read like a television movie. He and his coauthors McKenna (a freelance writer) and Matera (Strike Midnight) are not shy about describing Pena's assignments in highly hyperbolic terms, a style that becomes annoying at times. Still, even though some of Pena's accounts sound more like fiction than fact, there are a number of stories that will keep readers rapidly turning the pages to find out how our hero solves his many life-and-death cases. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)