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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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