The Lives Less Ordinary series brings you the most exciting, adventurous and entertaining true-life writing that is out there, for men who are time-poor but want the best. Lives Less Ordinary drops you into extreme first-hand accounts of human experience, whether that's the adrenaline-pumping heights of professional sport, the brutality of the modern battlefield, the casual violence of the criminal world, the mind-blowing frontiers of science, or the excesses of rock 'n' roll, high finance and Hollywood. Lives Less Ordinary also brings you some of the finest comic voices around, on every subject from toilet etiquette to Paul Gascoigne.

NYPD cop, Ed Conlon is quite simply the most stunningly authentic voice to ever tell what it is really like out there on the mean streets pursuing crime. His writing has been hailed as masterful and epic, and here he lets us know what is involved in the endless fight against the drug dealers. From grooming crackhead informants to adrenaline-fuelled chases, this is the true story of a New York drugs cop.

This digital bite has been extracted from Edward Conlon's stunning book Blue Blood.