Every so often a non-fiction book threatens to expose the common wisdom about its subject for a misconception. I can think of only a few books that have had this profound effect on me. One was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, co-authored by Alex Haley; another was Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver’s short but damning tale of incarceration, Soul on Ice.

I mention these two books because they come most readily to mind, not because I want to make race an issue. The subject of Uniquely Dangerous is an Anglo man who rose to wealth and renown while concealing a dark secret from everyone around him, including those he loved.

His name was Doug Spink, and if that sounds vaguely familiar, you have a long memory for the perverse and obscure. It hearkens back to a 2010 raid by a multi-agency taskforce of 30 people on a tiny cabin in Whatcom County, Washington, to bring Spink in for probation violations relating to an earlier arrest for drug smuggling.

But that wasn’t what made the headlines. What got the big, bold typeface was the announcement by authorities that they had busted a “bestiality farm” run by Spink, where clients could be serviced by dogs or horses he had on the property (including a champion show jumper). The allegations grew even weirder when local animal rescuers announced that they have saved several rats covered with petroleum jelly. One “client,” an English tourist, was arrested with Spink.

Carreen Maloney was an experienced print journalist and a supporter of the Whatcom County animal shelter that received Spink’s animals. While the headlines about bestiality repulsed her, she wondered about a lot of things. Why hadn’t any of the reporters who covered the story tried to interview Spink to get his side? Weren’t journalists supposed to be fair? What happened to the animals, especially seven dogs and the mice, that went to the county shelter? And what made a successful businessman like Spink, who worked in cutting-edge encryption technology that even puzzled the Feds, drop everything to live like a hermit and indulge a sexual orientation many people found revolting?

Thus began an eight-year odyssey for Maloney, but her toil and research has paid off in a remarkable tale that reads like a mystery story but has the ring of truth. We find out that the 2010 raid was only the beginning of Spink’s troubles with the justice system, which seemed more concerned about ending his vocal support for his alternative sexuality than about punishing him for a non-violent crime.

Maloney has accumulated a huge volume of material on Spink’s dual life, a high-tech wizard by day and a zoophile by night, and distilled it to its most essential parts. The story plunges backward and forward in time, exploring Spink’s past, his family life, and the marriage that ended in failure when he came out as a zoophile, and a gay one at that. But Maloney handles these transitions with great skill, even weaving in her own narrative, as a tragic personal loss sets her on the road to telling Spink’s story.

Along the way, Maloney also takes sidetracks into other elements of the hidden zoo culture, showing us how it covertly appears in art, advertising, entertainment, religion, as an enduring theme of a group that’s uncomfortable with its own species. She uses Spink’s torment at the hands of federal prosecutors as a lens through which to view society’s loathing of human-animal sex, and she courageously asks the question, why? Why such a visceral reaction?

If you are a zoophile, or know someone who is, you owe to yourself to buy Uniquely Dangerous, because seldom has writing on this inflammatory topic been so lucid, so even-handed and well-documented. If you are interested in the psychology of human sexual deviance, this book will provide useful insights. Similarly, those concerned with loss of personal freedoms and the erosion of privacy will find a story that illustrates their worst fears. If you like tales of personal will and courage in the face of overwhelming odds, you’ll cheer Spink’s outspoken defiance. And if you simply admire a riveting piece of journalism about a taboo subject, Maloney won’t disappoint you.

The portrait that emerges is of a complex, troubled man who always seems to find himself athwart the tides of life, whether he’s fighting his ex-fiancée for his beloved jumping horse or telling a federal court judge exactly how he feels. In the end, you may not like Doug Spink, but you might come to admire him. In a world that demands conformity, he refused to bend. Uniquely Dangerous is the balance sheet of what that stand has cost him.

It's a powerful thing to be able to confront one's own prejudices and preconceptions. Carreen Maloney sets an amazing example of personal courage and dedication to truth, and it's heartening to read that her example is teaching its own lesson by demonstration. I commend you on being able to challenge your own prejudices in the course of reading her account of Spink and his animals. The fact that Maloney, an animal rescuer, and the only person to actually care enough to meet Spink and hear him out could come to respect and admire him, as she clearly does (though not blindly; her portrait of him is certainly not entirely flattering. But it is honest.) should give anyone pause. It would have been very easy to simply write a hit piece portraying Spink as the degenerate monster which the news articles about him paint him as. But Maloney didn't spend 8 years investigation the circumstances surrounding the raid on Spink's home because she was interested in telling an easy story. She was interested in telling a *true* story. And to me Uniquely Dangerous rings as true as the news articles characterizations of Spink ring falsely. I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who could hear that ring.
As Malcom Brenner commented, this book is a balance sheet of the price Doug Spink and his family have paid for Doug's insistence on staying true to himself. And he's paid more than is related in the book. The whole truth of the circumstances surrounding Doug Spink will probably never be known, nor will those which Carreen Maloney experienced in brining this story to light. But enough of them are known thanks to her efforts to raise the question in any thoughtful person's mind as to why this man was labeled uniquely dangerous. The coordination between law enforcement agencies, the implementation of 30 swat team members, the unfounded claims made to assassinate his character publicly...what is it about this particular man that warranted all that? It's worth pondering.
Incidentally, although he is dying of cancer Spink is not in prison following his final arrest mentioned near the end of the book and in the postscript.

Good story. I find the bit about the vaseline covered gerbils hard to believe, but the rest seems accu rate.
I knew Spink online for several years. When he wants , he can come across as likable and smart. I had no idea about the bestiality until he outed /doxed himself online. Shortly afterwards, je was arrested as written.