I considered giving this two stars, but I think having seen the movie first really helped me like this book more. I could picture scenes and tone a lot better because of that. Overall, it's an interesting story. Stallworth led an undercover operation infiltrating the KKK in the 80s. It was an intelligence gathering mission and there weren't any dramatic arrests or information learned, but it was cool to see how the cops infiltrated and how the KKK was structured.

I really wish we (the reader) had learned more about the KKK, especially since the investigation didn't lead anywhere dramatic. I thought it was going to be more of a deep dive into their beliefs and how the organization worked, but it was just kind of a brief overview. I don't think I learned anything new about them, and all I knew before was that they were racist and kind of dumb. I'd have been okay with the book not having any kind of dramatic conclusion if he'd gone more in depth on the KKK and it felt worthwhile, but it just seemed kind of bland.

The biggest problem was the writing. Stallworth isn't a writer. He's a cop who wanted to write about his interesting experience. Which is fine, but the book had so many run on sentences. They'd be a paragraph long and phrased in a convoluted way that I sometimes had to reread in order to understand. He wrote how I would imagine he was trained as a cop, to get everything technically precise even if felt superfluous. My guess is this would be fine for a police report, but so awkward in a memoir. Example from literally the second sentence (which isn't the whole sentence, just part of it): "one of my duties was to scan the two daily newspapers for any reports of information concerning any hint of subversive activity that might have an impact on the welfare and safety of Colorado Springs."

And I'm not sure I've ever seen any use so many quotation marks (not including for dialogue). Every bit of slang down to "wannabe" was encased in them, and anything Stallworth seemed to disagree with. There was at least one on almost every page, and on one page I counted ten of them (again, not including quotation marks around dialogue). Examples: we were to look "nice"; he became a "model patrolman"; conformity to the "norm"; what we referred to as a "Yes Man." Fun fact, those all came from the same random page I just opened to when looking for examples spur of the moment.

It was also just boring. I thought he'd have to work hard to cram everything into just 188 pages, but it seemed like he was almost struggling to fill them. There was a lot of repetition, which is kind of an impressive feat in such a short book. He'd repeat information about the KKK and constantly remind us that even though Chuck was undercover, Stallworth was in charge. And there were so many different groups that all had different acronyms that I gave up keeping track of who was who.

Honestly, I'd just recommend watching the movie, which is very entertaining, and then googling what didn't happen (there was a lot of manufactured drama in the movie). That way you get a fun story, but also the facts. That was what I did a few months back, and I don't think reading the book added much to the experience.

Overall, not a book I'd highly recommend. It could have been a great story, but Stallworth really needed a ghostwriter. I was torn between 2 and 3 stars, but decided to give it the benefit of the doubt because at the end of the day, I'm glad I read it. I feel like I gained some understanding of the undercover mission and it was amusing that he pulled on over on the KKK.