True to the Blue

About the Book

D. E. Gray’s first book “The Warrior In Me” was a collective memoir of his 42 year career in Law enforcement, 28 years with the Los Angeles Police Department and 14 years with the Escondido Police Department in the North San Diego County. Even though author, D. E. Gray´s new book titled “True to the Blue” is a work of fiction, it is based in part on a true story along with actual events that the author 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 and that represents cops in every city. With the infamous L.A.P.D. Rampart scandal about to break open and Chief Bernard Parks´ hard-line approach with his officer accountability policy, Ortega eventually discovers that being a good cop is more than he had bargained for. When he is faced with protecting the identity of an “ELA Dukes” gang member who has turned confidential informant for an LAPD Hollenbeck division detective, he finds himself in trouble with the department. His hard work and dedication to the job would destroy his marriage and alienate his friends and partners who would abandon him in his time of need. Ortega would have to dig 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. Given one more chance to prove himself at the San Pasqual Police Department, Ortega would find himself investigating several murders that were made to look like drug overdoses. When his neighbors discover a large drug cache hidden in some Mexican Talavera pots they purchased, Ortega is tasked with finding the drug runner who lost the drugs to incompetence. When the neighbors are later found murdered, Ortega becomes obsessed with finding the killer who he believes may have also had a hand in the string of overdose murders as well as Sergio’s own ex-wife’s murder. Staying “True To The Blue” uniform leads Sergio on a journey that culminates into an unpredictable and shocking outcome.

About the Author

D. E. Gray began his law enforcement career in 1967, spending twenty-eight years as a Los Angeles police officer, twenty-six of those years working as a motorcycle officer. After his retirement from the LAPD in 1995, Gray was hired by the Escondido Police Department in North San Diego County. He spent another fourteen years there, much of it as a uniformed street cop. After Gray’s retirement from the force in 2008, he authored his first book titled The Warrior in Me, a memoir following his forty-two-year career at both agencies. After writing his first nonfiction book, The Warrior in Me, Gray decided to write his second book titled True to the Blue. Even though his second book is a work of fiction, it is based in part on a true story that includes actual events that the author experienced or witnessed while on the job. Many of the characters portrayed in True to the Blue are patterned after real people who have either worked or crossed paths with D. E. Gray during his forty-two-year career as a seasoned street cop. After experiencing a forty-two-year high working at the two police agencies, 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 LA police officers who band together to commit the perfect crime, proving to themselves that they aren’t too old to outsmart and outwit 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.” D. E. Gray once again decided he had another story to tell. This time it would begin where his second book, True to the Blue, left off. He titled it Conflict in Blue: The Marissa Ortega Story. Marissa Ortega is the daughter of deceased police officer Sergio Ortega, who was fired from the Los Angeles Police Department for a bogus charge of filing a false police report, a charge he was later cleared of. Marissa, now an LAPD officer herself, has a score to settle, not just with the notorious Avenues Street Gang, who delivers terror to the citizens of Southeast LA, but with the LAPD itself. She soon finds herself and her partner on a Mexican Mafia hit list after three Avenues Street Gang members die, one of them the little brother of a Mafioso, after the conclusion of a violent police pursuit. Even though she is on a Mafia hit list, Marissa sets out to find the gang member who killed her uncle back before she was born and who is now back out on the streets with EMERO status and who is now considered a parolee at large. Things get worse when the hit on Marissa and her partner by gang members goes awry, and instead, her aunt Nina is murdered, and her partner’s wife is murdered by accident. Marissa eventually teams up with Bryce Stevens, a detective assigned to the Robbery-Homicide Division of the LAPD. Together they devise a plan to trick an Avenues Street Gang member into becoming a confidential informant, hoping he will lead them to the individual who killed her uncle and to the gang members who killed her aunt and her partner’s wife. Conflict in Blue: The Marissa Ortega Story has thrills, suspense, humor, and romance. Gray presently lives in North San Diego County with his wife, Suzanne. ***