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Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.
by Evan Ratliff
The incredible true story of the decade-long quest to bring down Paul Le Roux—the creator of a frighteningly powerful Internet-enabled cartel who merged the ruthlessness of a drug lord with the technological savvy of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
It all started as an online prescription drug network, supplying hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of painkillers to American customers. It would not stop there. Before long, the business had turned into a sprawling multinational conglomerate engaged in almost every conceivable aspect of criminal mayhem. Yachts carrying $100 million in cocaine. Safe houses in Hong Kong filled with gold bars. Shipments of methamphetamine from North Korea. Weapons deals with Iran. Mercenary armies in Somalia. Teams of hit men in the Philippines. Encryption programs so advanced that the government could not break them.
The man behind it all, pulling the strings from a laptop in Manila, was Paul Calder Le Roux—a reclusive programmer turned criminal genius who could only exist in the networked world of the twenty-first century, and the kind of self-made crime boss that American law enforcement had never imagined.
For half a decade, DEA agents played a global game of cat-and-mouse with Le Roux as he left terror and chaos in his wake. Each time they came close, he would slip away. It would take relentless investigative work, and a shocking betrayal from within his organization, to catch him. And when he was finally caught, the story turned again, as Le Roux struck a deal to bring down his own organization and the people he had once employed.
Award-winning investigative journalist Evan Ratliff spent four years piecing together this intricate puzzle, chasing Le Roux's empire and his shadowy henchmen around the world, conducting hundreds of interviews and uncovering thousands of documents. The result is a riveting, unprecedented account of a crime boss built by and for the digital age.
"Starred Review. A true crime classic." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A wholly engrossing story that joins the worlds of El Chapo and Edward Snowden; both disturbing and memorable." - Kirkus Reviews
"If truth is stranger than fiction, then The Mastermind is the truest book you'll read this year. The only thing predictable about it is how quickly you'll turn the pages." - Noah Hawley, author of Before the Fall and creator of the TV series Fargo
"Evan Ratliff has pried open a hidden world of high-tech gangsters and drug kingpins and double-crossers and stone-cold hitmen." - David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon
"As directors, we spend countless hours imagining heightened plots and memorable characters that will leave a lasting impression on audiences. The true tale of obsession, genius, intrigue, and vengeance detailed in The Mastermind is as gripping and cinematic as anything we could endeavor to conjure up." - Joe and Anthony Russo, directors, Captain America and Avengers: Infinity War
This information about The Mastermind was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Evan Ratliff is an award-winning journalist and founder of The Atavist Magazine. He is a longtime contributor to Wired, The New Yorker, National Geographic, and other magazines, and a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Awards and the Livingston Awards. His 2009 Wired cover story "Vanish," about his attempt to disappear and the public's effort to find him, was selected by the magazine as one of the twenty best stories in its history. He also co-hosts the acclaimed Longform podcast and was a founding editor of Pop-Up Magazine, the country's most successful live journalism event. He is the co-author of Safe: The Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World, about innovation and counterterrorism, and the editor of the collection Love and Ruin: Tales of Obsession, Danger, and Heartbreak from The Atavist Magazine.
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