NBA Referee Tells Life Story in his book, COVERT My Years Infiltrating the Mob
NBA Referee Bob Delaney, currently in his 22nd year of active officiating in the National Basketball Association, will appear on the CBS Early Show on Friday, April 18, 2008 to discuss his book COVERT, My Years Infiltrating the Mob (Union Square Press, an imprint of Sterling Publishing). The Early Show airs on the CBS network from 7:00am to 9:00am (ET) – check local listings.
COVERT, My Years Infiltrating the Mob debuted in February to critical acclaim, including rave reviews in Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, the Boston Globe, Kirkus Reviews, ESPN.com, CNN/SI.com and a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. Delaney, a former New Jersey State Trooper who told his life story in COVERT, has been featured on ESPN, CNN and NPR Radio. Covert was released in early February and has since become the best-selling book to date for its publisher, Union Square Press.
Jack McCallum of Sports Illustrated told it best when he wrote under the headline:
PAGE-TURNING BACK STORY: Ref Delaney details undercover work in riveting book:
“In fact, few personalities in the world of sports, or the world in general, have a more captivating back story than Delaney, whose league-desired anonymity will diminish -- if not disappear entirely -- with the Feb. 4 release of his autobiography, Covert: My Years Infiltrating The Mob. With the help of co-author Dave Scheiber, a fine Florida-based journalist, Delaney, a former New Jersey state trooper, tells his tale lucidly and, best of all, understatedly. Delaney/Scheiber followed a cardinal rule of writing: The better the material, the more it should speak for itself. The writerly touches belong, I suspect, to Scheiber, but the blood-chilling drama about his time spent undercover with New Jersey Mafia types comes from Delaney's soul, his memory and, to be sure, a mountain of audio tapes that helped bring down the jaw-breakers and law-breakers who formed his social circle during three years of undercover work in the mid-1970s.”
