In My Soul: Memoirs of a Gypsy Cop by John Nicholas

Gypsies and cops are like oil and water. They don't mix. The Gypsy lifestyle is to circumvent the law whenever possible, pervert and suborn it when necessary and deal with it generally as the enemy. A Gypsy cop thus has a lot of information that Gypsies have protected from disclosure to the "Gadje" world for centuries, protected by making such disclosure a taboo punishable potentially by "marime" - excommunication, a cultural death sentence. John Nicholas' father was a Rom Baro, in colloquial parlance a Gypsy King. His mother was a storefront psychic. From New York to New Jersey to Florida and elsewhere they pursued the Gypsy lifestyle with dedication, zeal and success. John could have done the same - indeed, was routinely expected to - but he didn't. He became fascinated with the world of police work through early and frequent exposure to crooked cops and he liked it. Ironically, he became an honest cop, a devoted and dutiful one, though never fully above suspicion because of his background. John brings an unprecedented candor to what it is like to live the Gypsy life, from his very birth on the road in a trailer, to his early education in the ways of crime, his purchased wives, festivals, rituals and observances rarely exposed. At the same time he provides innumerable insights into the nitty-gritty of daily police work and the surprising and perhaps disillusioning motivations involved. This is not a cops and robbers story by any means. It is a story about the ambivalent journey of a person torn between two competing ideals and how me managed to walk the barely perceptible line down the middle. In the course of the story one learns a great deal about Gypsies, about cops and about life in these United States. Everyone can make those kinds of observations, but John Nicolas' vantage point is virtually unique. The Gypsies, or "Romany" as they call themselves, are coming to light today as they never have. Hitler tried genocide, The French have recently banished them, but here and in England they seem to have engendered a certain amount of fascination, reflected in reality TV. There is no "reality" with a camera and crew present. That is a canard to encourage viewership. If anyone is interested in the reality of Gypsies this book is as real as it gets.