SMUGGLER

Fillmore’s debut memoir chronicles how he fell into business with international heroin smugglers.

The opening lines of this remembrance plunge readers into action at the Nigerian border as chaos ensues over a lost bag of heroin. The author then looks back on his first assignment for a smuggling ring, and he recalls the initial intoxication of joining a crowd of 20-something college grads, desperate to bust “out of the narrow confines of our lives” by smuggling heroin into the United States from Europe. However, Fillmore’s “beginner’s luck” quickly ended when heroin went missing and he was forced to swear his allegiance to Alhaji, a Nigerian drug boss. Over the course of the book, Fillmore gracefully articulates the illusory charm of crime, which kept him and his business partner, Claire, coming back to Alhaji and his trade: “We simply did not conceive of ourselves as criminals,” he confesses, revealing the callowness of youth. But when the author was arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents and sentenced to four years in a maximum-security prison, he finally had to reckon with the “indignity of renouncing my actions.” Fillmore’s journey is replete with incredible, cinematic visual details, as well as a motley crew of characters, such as “fishermen lacquered in blood and fish scales.” His narration shows impressive thoughtfulness and clarity, even as he relates his journey at a breakneck pace. However, he sometimes glosses over piquant details that might have made for an even more engaging story; for instance, readers learn very little about the days leading up to Fillmore’s first assignment, when he and his colleagues “drink and plot, immersing ourselves in the details, arrivals, departures, in order to distract ourselves from the larger meaning of our travels.” 

An alluring and adventurous ride through a criminal underworld.