Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice

An astonishing story of bravery and honour: One man's quest-against incredible odds-to make a stand against crime...and to uncover the painful truths of his own background. From the sagging row houses of Paterson, New Jersey to the cocaine fields of Colombia, from the razor wire of Rikers Island to the streets of New York City, Bernard Kerik has dedicated his life to a single goal: to fight the injustice he sees around him. A jail warden with a black belt and a background in international security and anti-terrorism, he took a substantial pay cut to become a beat cop on the streets of Times Square in 1986. A fearless narcotics detective, he went undercover to buy drugs in Harlem, seized millions of dollars of cocaine from the druglords of the life of a fellow officer. In the 1990s, as the city's Commissioner of Correction, Cali cartel, and was awarded the Police Department's Medal of Valor for saving he ended the hellish violence at Rikers Island and transformed it into a model of its kind. Today, as Kerik directs the largest municipal police force in the world of 55,000, his battles continue.

And yet Bernard Kerik's greatest battle was not pitched on tough city streets, but within himself. For, even as he was driven to seek justice in every corner of the world, this extraordinary man never looked back until he reached the top. And when he did, he faced the greatest unsolved case of his life-the tragic mystery of his own mother, who abandoned her young son forty-one years ago.