If you say “Hells Angels” to me, my first response is likely to be “right turn, Clyde” – the hapless Black Widows motorcycle crew, modelled on the Hells Angels and other Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (OMGs), were my first taste of outlaw bikers in popular culture, but they hardly inspired fear. Although they are now a worldwide organisation, the Hells Angels started on the American West Coast, and for many of us are quintessentially an American phenomenon (and an American problem). Indeed, as Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) Special Agent Jay Dobyns says,  in terms of organised crime they are probably America’s only true export.

No Angel is Dobyns’ account of a period of several years during which his mission was to penetrate the Hells Angels organisation in Arizona. Along with several other undercover officers, Dobyns, known as ‘Jay Bird’ to his biker associates, was looking to build a case against the Angels for drug running, racketeering and intimidation, something that American law enforcement has traditionally had a hard time doing because of the tight-knit structure and lengthy application processes of the OMGs generally. No Angel would be an interesting enough book if it was a dispassionate account of the operation and its aftermath – but what makes it so gripping is how close Dobyns came to going completely native.

Over the course of the investigation, immersed in the OMG cultutre for long periods of time, he came to identify with aspects of their lifestyle and their values. Although he didn’t really like riding bikes, he got sleeved (had his arms entirely covered in tattoos), became addicted to diet pills and, by his own admission, because completely alienated from his own normal, suburban existence, with a wife and two children waiting for him at home. It almost cost him his marriage.

Dobyns is a fascinating and brutally frank narrator – he knows he screwed up, and isn’t afraid to say so. Collaborating with Nils Johnson-Shelton, he has produced a compulsive and enjoyable book about an intriguing subject: as he says on several occassions, it’s difficult to reconcile the desire of the Hells Angels to be outside mainstream society, with their drugs, guns and paranoia, with the regimented social order the have imposed on themselves, complete with elaborate democratic processes, charters, hierarchies and codes.

Ultimately, Operation Black Biscuit did not produce the results that its agents hoped, and certainly not results that could repay Jay Dobyns for the years of his life that he committed to pentrating the Hells Angels inner circle. While the outcome in law enforcement terms might have been disappointing, the results in terms of entertainment are thrilling. If only all autobiographies could be as clear-eyed and honest as No Angel…

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