Cocaine Wars by Paul Eddy5/20/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() There are even sad and sensitive first-person passages by Marks and his cronies recounting how they got involved in their racket. ![]() Their account often suggests a drug-seller's travelogue of exciting places and ingenious dodges as they trace Marks's international sales scheme. The authors flout sensationalism and self-righteous anti- drug rhetoric by not taking sides and by leaving the dichotomy between good and evil, in this case, uncomfortably ambiguous. They are played off as perfect alter egos, with Marks the more philosophical and, in some respects, more ethical character who sells only pot because he believes it harmless. What ensued was a cat-and-mouse caper of surveillance and counter-surveillance that digressed into ``a senseless Hollywood comedy.'' Eddy and Walden (co-authors, The Cocaine Wars, 1988) galvanize a potentially uninspiring tale of police forensics with an ironic twist: Marks emerges as a drug- trafficker you love to hate, while Lovato comes off as petty, simplistic, and cruel. Howard Marks was an ex-hippie, Oxford grad, and former British Intelligence agent who turned into an elusive pot-peddler whom police never expected to catch-until DEA agent Craig Lovato made finding him his life's obsession. A cop's hunt for a drug dealer resembles a ``marathon chess game'' in this surprising look at one battle in the war on substance abuse. ![]()
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