Anyone who remembers the eighties will also enjoy (maybe?) revisiting old names like James Baker, Ed Meese (who DOES NOT come off well), William Casey, Senator Jesse Helms, and, yes, even a couple of mentions of a much younger Joe Biden. She also touches on Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru and Bolivia. Along with Mexico, the author goes in-depth on Columbia. Even then, she calls the DEA out in a section on Panama and Noriega.Įven though this book has Camarena's photo, it's a much broader picture of the drug situation in Latin America during the eighties. Shannon does not take obvious sides, although I think that she towards the DEA, not Mexico or American politicians and diplomats. She provides excellent characterizations of players who might have just been names in a dry history book. This writer is an excellent storyteller and her research is meticulous. It was being written when so much was still fresh in the minds of the public, the DEA and the people the author interviewed.Įven though I had the gist of what happened with Kiki Camarena, this book still read like a thriller and a mystery when it came to his case. If anything, the fact that it was written in the eighties gives it a sense of immediacy. The book was originally published in 1988, although the author brought it up to date with an afterword in 2015. Read this if you want an in-depth companion to Narcos-Mexico or the Don Winslow 'Power of the Dog' books. So, to summarize, this is great book but now somewhat outdated but nevertheless a basis for Narcos: Mexico. Zavala, is the CIA or a a number of rogue CIA agents. I don't know if the producers claim to be factual-based but a more recent book authored by a reporter/writer of the magazine Proceso (which I haven't been able to get my hands on) claims that the culprits behind the killing of Agent Camarena and his pilot,Mr. Of course changes were made to "glamourize" some aspects of the narrative. But now after I was recommended to watch Netflix's Narcos: Mexico, I felt the need to revisit all the details of what went down and was known at the time, only to discover that most of what was portrayed in Narcos: Mexico is derived from this book. I bought the book around 1990, relatively still on the front burner -so to speak- and current. I first read Desperados shortly after reading the rather extensive coverage in the mainstream media about the death of Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, agent of the DEA stationed in Guadalajara.
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