Blurb

Killing Pablo is the inside story of the brutal rise and violent fall of Colombian cocaine cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar, whose criminal empire held a nation of thirty million hostage – a reign of terror that would end only with his death. In an intense, up-close account, best-selling author and award-winning journalist Mark Bowden exposes the never-before-revealed details of how U.S. operatives covertly led the sixteen-month manhunt.
Drawing on unprecedented access to the soldiers, field agents, and officials involved in the chase, as well as hundreds of pages of top-secret documents and transcripts of Escobar’s intercepted phone conversations, Bowden creates a gripping narrative that reads as if it were torn from the pages of a military technothriller. At every phase, he brings to life the men who brought the drug lord down. There is the Colombian president, Cesar Gaviria, afraid for his life and the future of his nation, who is forced to do the unthinkable: allow a foreign military to operate within his country’s borders. There is the U.S. ambassador, Morris D. Busby, who brings in the most sophisticated surveillance team in the world, code-named Centra Spike, and the best team of manhunters, the mysterious Delta Force. And there is the leader of the Colombian forces, Colonel Hugo Martinez, an incorruptible man who lives under constant threat during the drug lord’s reign – and whose own son plays a critical role on the fateful day when Pablo is finally found.

Review

Pablo Escobar was killed (spoiler alert?) when I was in high school. I remember seeing the image of his body in the street. But then I never really remember hearing much again until The Two Escobars episode of ESPN’s 30 For 30 series. It is still one of my favorite episodes out of that series, if not my number one. Then I watched season one of Narcos. That has basically been my exposure to the Pablo story before reading this.

There is obviously a lot of source material to work with here. I don’t know if it was deliberate or not for the sake of keeping the book succinct, or if there just was not as much material (my guess) on the rise of Pablo, but the details in this book in that regard or here, but light. However, the pursuit of Pablo is covered in great detail and reads like a thriller. You know the outcome, and yet you are still enthralled. It is the kind of chase if you had never heard of Pablo, you would think the back half of this book was fiction.

And while he never actual proposes the question, there is a morality tale in here on the means and ends debate, whether the atrocities carried out in the pursuit were worth it.

Very enjoyable read of a dark subject–drugs and the death that follows.