An admirably thorough and keen investigative report by two Miami Herald reporters about the drag-lord demons of the Medellin (Colombia) Cartel. Gugliotta and Leen kept their bylines off the ten Miami Herald articles on which this book is based—a wise move given the many journalists slain by Colombia's cocaine kingpins during the past decade. But their names are back now, and rightfully so: the research supporting this book is amazing, more than 300 interviews in over three years of digging, and it echoes in the deep detail that vivifies this shocking, fast-moving brief on the four cartel leaders, their henchmen, and the law officials arrayed against them. The authors' story begins in 1979, with a particularly vicious Dade County shoot-out in which Colombians announced their presence in Miami's drug world. At the head of the Colombian rat-pack: Pablo Escobar, Jose Gonzalo Rodriquez Gacha, and Jorge Luis Ochoa—cartel leaders now raking in billions a year, and through muscle and money virtually rulling Colombia—and Carlos Lehder, the megalomaniacal cocaine-addicted focus of this book, who set up a global cocaine distribution network and who now, the only cartel member to be punished, languishes in a US prison for life. Woven within the tale of the ruthless ascent of these once petty criminals is the Sisyphean tale of Colombia's justice minister Lara Bonilla and Anti-Narcotics Unit head Jaime Ramirez Gomez, both sworn to stop the cartel and both ending up with bullets in the brain. Other villains abound, too, including a horde of Yankee drug lieutenants, Panama's Noriega, and the Bahama's current P.M., Lynden Pindling, cartel property. Read it and weep. In the 1980's, it seems, crime pays very well indeed; but at least there are smart, committed reporters like Gugliotta and Leen to shine bright light into the dark valley of the drug lords.
Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 671-649574
Page Count: -
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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