On February 4, 2008, veteran NBA referee Bob Delaney's new book "Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob" hit bookstores throughout the nation. 

"Covert" chronicles a segment of Delaney's life before he came to the NBA -- the three years he was a New Jersey State Trooper working deep undercover to gather evidence against organized crime.  

He and co-author Dave Scheiber, a St. Petersburg Times sportswriter, tell the true story of how Delaney in the early 1970s posed as truck company president "Bobby Covert" to gather evidence that would eventually help convict more than 30 members of two prominent crime families.

"For the moment I stopped thinking like Bob Delaney, undercover state trooper," Delaney says in an excerpt from the book. "I felt invigorated, strangely comfortable all of a sudden as Bobby Covert -- as if the role were a kind of armor that gave me control and security. The line between Covert and Delaney, trucker and trooper, had become hopelessly blurred."  

"Covert" was released as the lead book of the spring catalog of Sterling Publishing's imprint, Union Square Press. In his 21st season as an NBA referee, Delaney will promote "Covert" through book signings and appearances throughout the nation.