About Michael Pevarnik
Michael Pevarnik is a thirty-year veteran of federal and local law enforcement, retiring in 2009 as a supervisory special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
He was the case agent for “Operation Tune-Up”, a history-making investigation that virtually eliminated heroin for the better part of two years in New England’s second largest city, giving one inner-city community a long-denied voice to take back their neighborhood.
His casework as a field agent and supervisor with DEA’s Mobile Enforcement Team – an elite group based in Boston that deployed to dismantle deeply rooted organizations in drug related, violent crime plagued communities throughout the six-states of New England – earned the author more than two-dozen awards, including the DEA Administrator’s Award (Providence RI); US Attorney’s Award in the District of Massachusetts; the New Hampshire State Police Colonel’s Award; and the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force Award in the Districts of Connecticut and Maine. He later
oversaw the division’s Asset Forfeiture Group, established its Financial Investigations Team, and restructured its Recruitment Program.
A former police officer/detective with the Montclair NJ Police Department, the author has a Bachelor of Science degree (Magna Cum Laude) in criminal justice and accounting from William Paterson University. He is also a graduate of the Essex County NJ Police Academy and the DEA Academy in Quantico VA.
About A Peek Under the Hood
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.