This humorous memoir written by a serving police officer of the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) is at once insightful, irreverent, empathetic and raucous. Author John Donoghue manages to find humor even in the midst of horrific situations. It's a defense mechanism, of course, a way to insulate oneself from the terror and tragedy, to continue forward and yet not fall down. As he writes: "I guess that's where the black humor comes from. It's either make a joke about things or go back home and lie down in a darkened room and listen to whale music." Humor is also a way to insulate yourself from the hatred and injustice heaped upon your head like hot coals. But there are also times when there's nothing to do but face things head on, such as when having to notify a man's family that he's dead, the victim of his own reckless driving. "When you attend and incident like that, sometimes the humour in he job just deserts you." The chronicle of his misadventures as he serves as the commander of a patrol unit covers a year, and within that year he witnesses the heights of hilarity and human foolishness and the black depths of despair. When he finishes it, he is not quite the same person as he started: "I hadn't yet reached the stage where I stared into the abyss and the abyss stared back at me and then looked away in shame. However, in some way I felt I'd lost what was left of my innocence--that in some ways life had maybe lost a bit of its mystery. Dealing with the worst that society can offer certainly makes you more cynical." And yet..."I'd fitted a lifetime of new adventure into just one year, and had so many good laughs my sides ached, had real job satisfaction and felt some genuine camaraderie again." Obviously, since we're dealing with a mostly chronological and episodic account of true events, there is no "plot," but there is a great deal of character growth and change, a sense that we are dealing with very real people trying their utmost to make the best (for themselves and the public) out a series of bad situations. "A policeman's lot is not a happy one," goes the lament in "The Pirates of Penzance," but, as we derive from this book, it is one filled with hilarity and tragedy, pathos and despair, weariness and excitement, terror and apathy. I enjoyed this book from beginning to end, and I think it should appeal to those who also enjoy factual memoirs, written with a keen wit that is at times caustic, at times empathetic, at times frustrated, but always laced with optimism and hope, even when the foibles of the public indicate the end of civilization as we know it is not far off...perhaps especially then.