Macomb Township author uses undercover experience in new novel

MACOMB TOWNSHIP — Macomb Township resident Jeff Moore has seen a lot during his time in law enforcement. From the streets of Kansas City, Missouri, to taking down 90-year-old Sinaloa Cartel trafficker Leo Sharp with the Drug Enforcement Administration, what Moore has experienced could fill a novel.

And that’s exactly what Moore has done.

“The Quiet Houses: Fall of the Narcs” is Moore’s authorial debut, inspired by his time with the Kansas City Police Department in the early 2000s.

“I was actually a graphic artist when I got out of college,” Moore said. “I ended up losing my job when I was working in that field, and then I just decided to temporarily take a job as a police officer. I ended up working for four years as a road cop and then one year as an undercover narcotics detective.”

As part of his undercover work with the Kansas City PD, Moore would visit drug houses and interact with the various people facilitating and operating these spots. These investigations involved getting into situations where the wrong moves could turn fatal, and key to avoiding such outcomes were informants. One informant, a woman named Tamera Mack, worked closely with Moore.

“(Mack) had been on the streets most of her life, but she was working as an informant to train undercover police officers,” Moore said. “She would show us the ropes — how to buy drugs on the street, how to get into these houses.”

“The Quiet Houses” focuses on Moore’s and Mack’s work around the Kansas City drug scene, before events pit them against corrupt narcotics officers, among others. Moore says he never had to deal with corrupt cops in Kansas City, those elements of the story coming from his time with the DEA.

“A lot of these true crime novels try to create these really grandiose stories that just incorporate unbelievable characters,” Moore said. “The drug subculture has so many interesting smaller stories in it, a lot of smaller struggles and just really nefarious characters. In this book, you’re actually being introduced to real people selling drugs, and they’re not all Pablo Escobar. … It just really portrays Kansas City in 2003 when there was an epidemic of crack houses and they were just sending these undercovers into these houses to try and close them down.”

After five years with the Kansas City Police Department, Moore joined the DEA in St. Louis and later transferred to Detroit.

The idea to put his experiences from Kansas City into a book came during the isolation of the early COVID-19 pandemic.

“Over the years, I’ve always enjoyed writing and stuff like that,” Moore said. “Just to kind of channel the anxiety and stress away from the job, and during that I was locked down, working from home in 2020. I was just kind of bored and was like, ‘Hey, I need to start putting some of these stories down on paper from when I was doing all of this undercover stuff.’”

“The Quiet Houses” is not the first depiction of Moore’s time in law enforcement. His role in the investigation and capture of Sharp was dramatized in Clint Eastwood’s 2018 film “The Mule,” with Bradley Cooper playing a DEA agent based on Moore. He is currently in talks on a streaming-based venture, though details are limited at this time.

“The Quiet Houses” is available online and in bookstores. An audiobook is currently in development.