Killing Pablo : The hunt for the richest, most powerful criminal in history - Softcover

Bowden, Mark

3.97

18,082 ratings by Goodreads

9781903809488: Killing Pablo : The hunt for the richest, most powerful criminal in history

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903809487 ISBN 13: 9781903809488

Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2002

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

This work charts the rise and spectacular fall of the Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar, richest and most powerful criminal in history. The book exposes the massive illegal operation by covert US Special Forces and intelligence services to hunt down and assassinate Escobar. It is a story that has rarely been told before: Mark Bowden has had exclusive access to highly classified intelligence documents, secret surveillance footage and Escobar's wiretap transcripts, and interviewed all the major players in the manhunt. The book sets out to combine the energy of a Tom Clancy techno-thriller and the detail of award-winning investigative journalism.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Readers of Black Hawk Down know Mark Bowden can tell an exciting story about as well as any writer at work today. Killing Pablo is further proof. It describes the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, a notorious Colombian drug lord who became one of the narcotic trade's first billionaires. Pablo--Bowden refers to him by his first name throughout the book--started out as a petty thief and wound up running a massive smuggling empire. At his height in the 1980s, he owned fleets of boats and planes, plus 19 separate residences in Medellin, each with its own helipad. Violence marked everything he did: "He wasn't an entrepreneur, and he wasn't even an especially talented businessman. He was just ruthless." He bought off police, politicians, and judges throughout his country, and killed many others who wouldn't cooperate. The Colombian government tried to capture him, but without much luck; he evaded them time after time. "Now and then the police achieved enough surprise to catch him, literally, with his pants down. In [1988], about one thousand national police raided one of his mansions," writes Bowden. "Pablo fled in his underwear, avoiding the police cordon on foot." He got away, again, but his days were numbered. He was making powerful enemies in both Colombia and the United States. The final straw probably came when Pablo's men murdered a popular politician and, three months later, planted a bomb on a plane, killing 110 people, including two Americans.

The bulk of Killing Pablo describes what happened when the U.S. government put its resources behind the hunt for Pablo. Bowden describes the search in gripping detail, from the massive electronic-surveillance effort to bureaucratic infighting between rival U.S. agencies. This is an outstanding work of reportorial journalism, too: in the epilogue, Bowden drops tantalizing hints that it was an American--not a Colombian--who delivered the killing shot to Pablo in 1993. Readers looking for a real-life thriller--or any kind of thriller, for that matter--won't do much better than Killing Pablo.

About the Author:

Mark Bowden is the bestselling author of Black Hawk Down, Bringing the Heat and Doctor Dealer (2000). He has been a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty years.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.