Publishers Weekly
12/10/2018
Retired DEA agent Riley reviews his three decades of combating drug traffickers in this gripping memoir. Riley was at the forefront of the efforts to apprehend Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, currently on trial in New York for drug trafficking. Riley joined the DEA in 1985 and soon began working undercover, where he quickly realized the futility of racking up arrest statistics that removed a street dealer from a corner for a short while, but did nothing to address the larger organization supplying that dealer. His successes led to more and more responsibility within the DEA, where he pushed for interagency efforts to target entire cartels. In 1995, he heard about El Chapo, a Mexican crime boss who stood out because the Colombians paid him in drugs to distribute their cocaine within the U.S. Other Mexican drug lords soon followed El Chapo’s lead, and with their own supply of cocaine, they were able to push the Colombians out of the U.S. market. Over the course of decades, Riley zealously pursued El Chapo, efforts that eventually paid off with his most recent apprehension in 2016 and his extradition to the U.S. Riley doesn’t regard the war on drugs as close to over, noting that law enforcement can’t be solely responsible for combating widespread drug addiction. This accessible look at the dangerous work of the men and women of the DEA deserves a wide audience. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
"[An] incredible story."—New York Post
"Drug Warrior is a riveting account of America's drug war. Jack Riley steps right out of central casting: a tough cop on a mission. But Drug Warrior goes beyond Riley's gruff exterior and shows the trials and tribulations of fighting a war that can't be won. Riley's sense of duty is the heart of the book. Want to better understand America's first forever war? You'll find answers here."—Kevin Maurer, co-author of the New York Times bestsellers No Easy Day and American Radical
"[An] entertaining, no-holds-barred memoir....To know Jack Riley is clearly to know a Damon Runyonese-type character; a person larger than life....Riley's memoir makes a compelling and irrefutable case on why a purely criminal justice approach cannot and will not succeed. The unvarnished, candid, and irreverent insights that Riley so willingly shares can be repeated ad infinitum by many of my former colleagues and myself, who also experienced the very hell of which Riley speaks."—Frederick T. Martens, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books at Rutgers University
"For 15 years, Chapo has been Riley's white whale, the object of an obsession that teetered on derangement and sidelined everything else, including his family... A ruddy, white-haired bruiser who holds court from a bar stool, Riley seemed dispatched from the days of fedoras and cops lighting Luckies at crime scenes."
—Paul Solotaroff, Rolling Stone
"Riley's intensity and charisma have made him one of the most quoted and recognizable advocates for drug enforcement in the country."—Chicago Reader
"Drug Warrior is an interesting look at the life and times of both Guzman, a major drug trafficker, and Mr. Riley, the DEA special agent who relentlessly pursued him."—The Washington Times
"A sturdy, unadorned tale of true crime and its foes."
—Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
2018-11-12
A leading Drug Enforcement Agency officer recounts his long battle against South American cartels and a Mexican kingpin.
As Riley's memoir opens, he's on the run, being chased on a Texas highway into New Mexico by hit men in the employ of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo. He was outgunned, but somehow he got out of it, whereupon he turns back the clock to the beginning of his career. After turning down an offer from the more prestigious FBI, he joined the DEA and went to war against the Colombian cartel, then personified by Pablo Escobar, whose "real-life narrative was straight out of a Hollywood gangster movie." Escobar was also a smart businessman who knew a market when he saw it, flooding the insatiable United States with cocaine. By Riley's lights, El Chapo was worse yet, a vicious criminal who conducted at least some of his enterprise from the safety of a Mexican prison. The author notes that El Chapo wasn't just involved in cocaine and marijuana, but was a leading purveyor of opioids: "While I believe that many are responsible for our nation's drug crisis, including unscrupulous doctors, pharmacies, wholesale drug distributors, drug companies, and the banking industry, none played a bigger criminal role than El Chapo." Flushing him out of hiding after his escape from prison and getting him extradited to the U.S. was no easy matter, but it provides a satisfying payoff to Riley's eventful story. There's a by-the-numbers aspect to the narrative, including the requisite tough-guy language (the bad guys are "scumbags" and "jagoffs," among other choice epithets), as well as complaints about the typical bureaucratic hassles involved in honoring the Fourth Amendment. But Riley is an equal-opportunity despiser of those who got in the way, including actor Sean Penn ("an exploitative asshole") and Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz ("This dickhead had no idea how hard I worked, or even what DEA agents did").
A sturdy, unadorned tale of true crime and its foes.
