PILL CITY deftly touches a range of national issues as it sings the ballad of Brick and Wax, including urban crime, addiction, race, mental health, sexual abuse, encryption, entrepreneurship and the tech industry . . . Leaving aside the national and political issues, the gritty human drama in PILL CITY has enough layers and drama to make a great movie or series, complete with two nerds from the projects pulling down $5 million and a climax both violent and redemptive. Mr. Scorsese? Mr. Simon? Mr. Fuqua?”—Newsweek
"In a remarkable feat of discovery, Deutsch exposes the perpetrators and victims in America’s opiate wars and those who are risking their lives to undermine their criminal enterprise. He takes a deep dive into a surprise addendum to the riots in Baltimore that followed the death of Freddie Gray, who died from injuries sustained while in police custody in April 2015. Deutsch lets the authentic and powerful voices of those involved reveal the ruthless tactics employed to dominate the illegal drug markets and the equally dramatic efforts by law enforcement to curtail and repair their damage."—Booklist (starred review)
"Streetwise, brutal, deeply researched and filled with candid interviews from both sides of the law, Pill City is true-crime reporting with an edge."—Shelfawareness
"America's urban crisis has never been more alive, more shocking, than in PILL CITY. Reminiscent of HBO's "The Wire", Kevin Deutsch's stunning investigation show how a $100 million fortune in opiates—heroin and pills—was stolen during the 2015 Baltimore riots following the death of Freddie Gray and then spread and sold illegally across the nation, compounding one tragedy with another. With this harrowing account from the encrypted Dark Web and our bloody streets, Kevin Deutsch proves himself among today's most insightful and eloquent observers of criminal life in the United States."— Thomas Maier, author/producer of Showtime's "Masters of Sex"
"An astonishing feat of reportage. PILL CITY is an almost unbelievable tale and journalist Kevin Deutsch tells it masterfully. His unflinching look at the choices two brilliant young men from Baltimore make in search of their American Dream goes behind the headlines and illuminates the heartbreaking complexity of today’s opioid epidemic. A shocking, important book."—Julia Dahl, author of "Invisible City"
"PILL CITY is in the best tradition of true-crime writing. It belongs on your shelf next to the books of David Simon and Sebastian Junger."—Michael LaForgia, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for local reporting for The Tampa Bay Times
Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire
Narrated by Mirron Willis
Kevin DeutschUnabridged — 7 hours, 27 minutes
Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire
Narrated by Mirron Willis
Kevin DeutschUnabridged — 7 hours, 27 minutes
Overview
April 27, 2015: Mosher and Gilmore Streets, Baltimore, Maryland, Ground Zero in America's Pill Wars.
Near this crime-plagued corner, the death of Freddie Gray has triggered the worst domestic rioting in years-and created a terrifying new breed of criminal entrepreneur. Here, as looters and arsonists lay waste to parts of Baltimore, two of the city's brightest high-school students are helping to carry out a historic drug robbery spree, one that will transform America's underworld, leave entire swaths of their city in ruins, and entrench them as the nation's youngest drug lords.
In this groundbreaking book, Kevin Deutsch, criminal-justice reporter for Newsday, chronicles the rise of two gangland upstarts as they help steal $100 million worth of high-powered opiates and build a narcotics empire from scratch.
Based on immersive reporting and interviews with more than 300 drug dealers, narcotics investigators, gang members, opiate addicts, and others, Pill City is the first journalistic account of the riot-fueled drug robberies that brought Baltimore to its knees, unleashing a nationwide wave of addiction and murder.
With homicide totals spiking in cities across America-violence that stems largely from drug-related turf wars-this book will make a valuable contribution to the national conversation about addiction, race, gangs, and policing.
Editorial Reviews
11/15/2016
Newsday crime reporter Deutsch (The Triangle) here shares the story of Brick and Wax, two teenagers who take advantage of protests and riots in 2015 Baltimore and coordinate raids on several dozen pharmacies, stealing prescription narcotics. Coding their own app to provide a drug delivery system, the two make millions while offering cheap, easily accessible opioids. Deutsch covers the rise of Wax and Brick while also outlining how the police and community tried to contain the spread of broken lives. The pair took advantage of the situation until finally it came back on them. Deutsch offers snapshots of the community during the months that Pill City, the name of Wax and Brick's outfit, operated, and how sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers are victims of their empire. The book shows communities both torn apart by and responding to an opioid epidemic. Deutsch's analysis looks at the two young men, a mob war, and the neighborhood caught in the middle. VERDICT This story is not well known, but it should be. Recommended for those who are interested in reading about drug wars, community opioid addiction, and civic engagement.—Ryan Claringbole, Wisconsin Dept. of Pub. Instruction, Madison
08/01/2017
In April 2015, Freddie Gray died while in the custody of the Baltimore police, spurring protests witnessed by millions of Americans through television and social media broadcasts. What viewers didn't see was the looting of thousands of opiate pills from pharmaceutical stores. An ingenious distribution scheme that relied on technology to deliver these pills directly to addicts ("an Uber of drug dealing") kicked off a spate of deaths that would extend across the country. The masterminds of "Pill City" were two high school boys. Dubbed "Brick" and "Wax" by author and veteran reporter Deutsch, the teens launched their unorthodox business model out of a desire to make money, like "those white boys in Silicon Valley." Using firsthand accounts from Brick, Wax, gang members, recovered addicts, police detectives, medical personnel, and others, Deutsch skillfully twists together a horrifying narrative. Were this fiction, readers could close the book with a shudder. But Deutsch makes it impossible to forget the people, both living and dead, who bring new urgency to the term opioid epidemic. VERDICT Recommend to teens interested in true crime, political activism, and the ethical issues surrounding technology.—Diane Colson, Librarian, City College, Gainesville, FL
2016-11-01
A tale of "one of the most profitable illicit opiate dealing schemes in American history."The most impressive element of this book is that Newsday criminal justice writer Deutsch (The Triangle: A Year on the Ground with New York's Bloods and Crips, 2014) was able to get behind the technology that hid the identities of the two computer-programming drug dealers from the police, the public, and the many of those deeply involved in an operation that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and claimed hundreds of casualties through overdoses and gang rivalries. The story begins in Baltimore with the highly controversial death of Freddie Gray at the hands of the police. The riots sparked by the outrage provided the perfect opportunity for the looting of "approximately $100 million worth of prescription opiates and heroin in little over a day." The author terms this "a feat unprecedented in the annals of American crime," but what really distinguished the operation were the methods through which the dealers distributed the drugs and spread their network. The masterminds were two techie teenagers who employed programming and encrypting to ensure efficiency and anonymity. "It looked like Uber, but it was built for [dealers] to get product to customers," said one gang leader. "For two 18-year-old kids to run a business like this…it's genius, from a criminal's perspective," marveled one of the detectives. "But it's also just about the most horrible thing you can do to places that are already suffering from poverty and violence." Despite the riveting setup, much of the book finds the author reporting dialogue remembered by participants from years earlier, re-creating scenes that he never witnessed, and trying to interweave context from police and addiction authorities with the street narrative, which has a completely different tone. An important story meticulously reported but that nonetheless strains toward novelization in the telling.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169779707 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 01/31/2017 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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