About the Books
Eclipse of the Blue: For Greater Glory
After experiencing a 42 year high working at the two police agencies, retired-police-officer-turned-author D.E. Gray realized that he and others like him were being replaced by a new breed of cop, many of whom never had to think outside the box or more accurately, outside the police manual. The new breed of cops had new cars, new weapons, newer equipment, newer training and even more modern newly built police stations.
This gave Gray the idea for his third and newest book titled, Eclipse of the Blue: For Greater Glory.
This story follows the lives of twelve retired L. A. police officers who band together to commit the perfect crime, proving to themselves that they aren’t too old to out-smart and out-wit the newer generation of cops that have taken their places.
This story is part “The Sting” and part “Mission Impossible” with a surprise ending that will have you rooting for the twelve former cops who call themselves, “The Retired Blues Crew.”
Visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRpwGqpXLj8
True To The Blue
Although True to the Blue is a work of fiction, it is based in part on a true story along with actual events that author D. E. Gray experienced or witnessed while on the job. Many of the characters in this story are patterned after real people who have worked or crossed paths with D. E. Gray during his 42-year career as a street cop.
This story begins in early 1999 and follows the hardships of Sergio Ortega; a six-year veteran of the L.A.P.D. who is assigned to the elite C.R.A.S.H. gang unit of the Operations Central Bureau. It follows Ortega’s struggle to be the best at what he does, getting the bad guys off the streets, while staying true to his badge and the blue uniform that he wears that represents cops in every city. All the while, he digs deep into his past to come to grips with his downward spiraling life to try to salvage it from the disaster it had come to be.
Staying True To The Blue uniform leads Sergio on a journey that culminates into an unpredictable and shocking outcome.
Visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-GIYxPs9Jk
The Warrior in Me
The Warrior in Me offers readers a look back at the author’s distinguished career with both the Los Angeles Police Department and the Escondido Police Department. It contains several accounts of true events that happened in various locations of California from murder to robbery and chases. Along the way, Gray learned that there were cops, and then there were real cops – the ones who worked the streets everyday. Gray further surmised that law enforcement organizations are comprised of two groups of people – street warriors (who patrolled the mean streets) and administrators (who worked their way up the ladder through promotions). Ultimately, this book emphasizes in detail the police culture like no other book could.
Visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqftZAIDDFo
Conflict in Blue
Conflict in Blue: The Marissa Ortega Story follows the life of Sergio Ortega’s daughter, Marissa Ortega, who is now a Los Angeles police officer assigned to the Northeast Division of Operation Central Bureau. When Marissa Ortega and her partner are involved in a violent vehicle pursuit and shoot-out with a carload of Avenues Street Gang members, who all end up getting killed, the Mexican Mafia orders a hit on Marissa and her partner. The person who is ordered to carry out the hit is none other than Jorge Mendoza, the Avenues Street Gang member who was now out of prison after serving twenty-eight years for the murder of Marissa’s uncle back before she was born.
It turns out killing a cop is not as easy as it looks when the wrong people are killed, including some of the Avenues Street Gang members themselves. Detective Bryce Stevens, who is investigating one of the gang murders, teams up with Marissa Ortega, and together they trick an Avenues Street Gang member into becoming an unwilling confidential informant to help them find Jorge Mendoza and bring him to justice.
Desperate Measures
The book follows the story of Chase Longmire, a high-ranking 23-year veteran police detective working at LAPD’s elite Robbery Homicide Division. Chase soon learns that he has an incurable form of brain cancer with six months to live. He has to come to terms with his terminal disease and devises a plan to return to uniform patrol (street cop) in a hot division (Newton Division) to commit suicide by thug. If he dies on the job, his family will collect 1.5 million dollar life insurance policy. However, it turns out getting killed on the job has its problems. His plan runs into a major snag when the captain of his division assigns him a new female police officer to train. Now he must protect her, not just from the physical dangers of the job, but also from the internal dangers within the department, while at the same time, try to commit suicide by thug. After struggling with her last FTO, Longmire is her last chance to becoming one of Los Angeles’ finest.
GUMSHOE
Ten-year LAPD sergeant, Walter Sunderland was about to cross off another item on his personal bucket list. He would soon be transferring out of uniform patrol and head downtown to the elite Robbery Homicide Division as an LAPD detective. Working RHD was his dream job and like most things in his life, whatever he set his mind to, he usually succeeded. Married to a beautiful woman who made twice the money he did selling million-dollar homes in the trendy upscale neighborhood of Porter Ranch in the northwest San Fernando Valley, where they now lived themselves, was just the frosting on the cake. It would only take one act of pure stupidity to rear its ugly head that would bring his world crashing down around him. Now, fired from the police department, divorced from his wife, and after serving a short prison sentence, he was just a heartbeat away from becoming a down and out homeless street person himself. Living in a cheap downtown hotel that overlooked skid row, he was now working menial part-time jobs trying to keep his head above water to survive. It would be the very woman who accused him of rape under the color of authority that got him fired from the force and sent him to jail, who was now pleading for his help. She, herself, was now the number one suspect in the murder of her former husband and. with limited funds, she had nowhere to turn. The two unlikely pair would join forces to spar with her former dead husband’s new wife along with the LAPD detectives investigating his murder and at the same time, deal with their own ongoing mistrust for one another. Without the use of any of the LAPD’s resources provided to regular sworn detectives on the job, Sunderland was now being measured by everyone around him as nothing more than a washed-up Gumshoe, a term he hated with contempt. Even so, he now would have to rely on his own wit and expertise as he follows up on his instincts, leads and scenarios to come up with answers he so desperately needed. Those answers wouldn’t come easy after hitting one roadblock after another as he tried to piece together the realities and assumptions that no one else was willing to tackle. Together, Walt Sunderland and Gretchen Quinn’s journey would take them to an unpredictable and shocking conclusion.
Talking Out Loud
Note: Talking Out Loud; The Casey Hoghupper Story, is a spinoff to the book, Desperate Measures; The Chase Longmire Story, written be author, d. e. gray.
A Twilight Zone Parody;
“Picture if you will, you are a police officer who works for a large metropolitan city and you have a guardian angel that only you can see and hear. Congratulation, you have just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.”
Casey Hoghupper, a six-year veteran police officer working LAPD’s 77th Division has a secret. She has a guardian angel that no one else can see or hear but her. The problem is, the other officers in her division only see her, “Talking Out Loud” when no one else is present.
Question? Is the stress of the job causing her to lose her mind?
The captain of her division along with city psychologist, Althea Bianchi, are tasked with finding out if she is still fit to “Protect and to Serve” the citizens of Los Angeles.
Evaluating Casey Hoghupper wouldn’t be easy for Dr. Bianchi since Casey herself has earned a BA degree in psychology from renown Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. The two would go head-to-head during their office visit and later, after spending only one night as an observer during Hoghupper’s Watch-3 shift, Dr. Bianchi becomes even more convinced that she should be relieved of her police powers and retired to civilian life.
Aside from several appearances by her guardian angel, Casey’s demeanor as a police officer has always been completely above board, professional and by the book, and thanks to 77th Division Captain, Howard Carver, Dr. Bianchi would end up, more or less, falling on her own sword.
In an effort to escape some of the stigma given to her by her fellow police officers, Casey puts in for a transfer to another division and soon finds herself working Hollywood Division. Hollywood is the place elitist like to refer to as the “Entertainment Capital of The World,” but to the Hollywood coppers who work there, it’s the land of “fruits and nuts.”.
Casey realizes that whoever coined the phrase; “Being a cop in L. A. is like having a ringside seat to the greatest show on earth” was point on, but now working Hollywood Division, it was now time to “send in the clowns.”
After another visit from her guardian angel, Casey Hoghupper thwarts the mass murder of over 20 people who were staying at the Hollywood Gay Dream Motel on a chilly Christmas eve. Her quick actions made it possible for all the guest to flee the motel just minutes before it is leveled and burned to the ground by a murderer’s homemade bomb.
Casey Hoghupper teams up with Detective Marrisa Ortega and together they go on the hunt to track down the suspect who planted the bomb, if for no other reason, to hide the murder of the man named John Smith in room #12.
This story will have you crying, laughing and rooting for cops who have to deal, not only with the Hollywood eccentrics, but the street wise criminals and those within the LAPD’s ivory tower.