The Book That Closed the 66-year-old 'Cold Case' Murder of a Phoenix Police Officer

LAS VEGAS, April 8 /PRNewswire/ -- In his new semi-autobiographical, roman a cle history, "Gunfights & Gunfighters: Reflections from a Phoenix Police Officer" (published by iUniverse), debut author Gordon A. Hunsaker shares his history with the Phoenix Police Department as he leads the reader through that city's mean and dark streets filled with crazies who constantly prowl, always looking for an unguarded moment or vulnerable, innocent citizen slumbering in safety.

It was the advance reading of Chapter 11, "Blue on Blue," where in 1944 a black on-duty police officer was shot to death by a white off-duty Phoenix Police Detective in an incident that reeked of tampering with witnesses, manipulation of evidence, perjury and racial prejudice that caused a reconsidering of the circumstance of his death, and for that officer to be recognized as having been slain while honorably in the performance of duty after 66 years of neglect.

Unflinchingly, Hunsaker reveals Billy Ray Gilbert, a triple murderer in the 1940s tagged "Mad Dog" by the press, who went on a burglary, armed robbery, kidnapping and killing spree spanning two states. When stopped, this demon-possessed killer was planning further kidnappings and killings of law enforcement officers in several cities and towns in Arizona. Hunsaker writes:

It is like an old dinosaur sergeant once told me: "Being a police officer is, in fact, like working in the sewer: the sewer of man's depravity toward his fellow man." You go to work each day, dressed in the proper garb with all of the prescribed protective accessories, and you shovel s--- all day long - thick s---, thin s---, runny s---, lumpy s---, but all of it the stinky s--- of man's malevolence toward his fellow creature; creatures who are as often as not, unable to defend themselves, the youthful, the infirm in limb and mind, the halt.

From the laughter within the precinct to the horror of child murders and sexual predators, Hunsaker gives the reader a chance to get right up close to smell the stink of human depravity in "Gunfights & Gunfighters," a remarkable, irreverent, conscience-shocking, sexually explicit, profane, exceedingly violent and bloody, unauthorized history of the Phoenix Police Department at its best and its worst.

About the Author

Born just prior to the beginning of WWII and raised in Phoenix, Hunsaker attended high school in East Los Angeles. From 1964 to 1980, after serving four years as a Marine in SE Asia, he worked as a police officer, a detective, an undercover narcotics agent and an airplane and helicopter pilot for the Phoenix Police Department. Then, from 1980 until 2003, he worked as a contract employee for a small firm supplying security and intelligence services in Mexico, Central and South America, Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Recently tagged by a former crime reporter as the Hunter S. Thompson of police writers, "Gunfights & Gunfighters" is Mr. Hunsaker's first official publication.

"Gunfights & Gunfighters"

Available from: http://www.iUniverse.com, http://www.bn.com, and http://www.amazon.com

iUniverse is the premier book publisher for emerging, self-published authors. For more information, please visit http://www.iuniverse.com.

    
    
    EDITORS: For review copies or interview requests, contact:
    
    Promotional Services Department
    Tel: 1-800-AUTHORS
    Fax: 812-355-4078
    Email: [email protected] 
    (When requesting a review copy, please provide a street address.)

This press release was issued through eReleases(R).  For more information, visit eReleases Press Release Distribution at http://www.ereleases.com.

SOURCE iUniverse