This is not a full biography of the Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, although there is some detail on his earlier life, but this focuses more on the end of his reign as the head of the Medellin cartel and how the Colombian and US authorities hunted and killed him.

The atrocities that Escobar and his sicarios brought to Colombia were appalling and particularly hard to believe. Totally shocking.

This is an extremely well researched book and totally involving and engrossing. If you want a book that shows the glamorous life of a drug lord then this is not the book for you.

I remember when I saw the first season of Netflix’s NARCOS, feeling distinctly cheated by the ending. Having spent so many years of narrative with Pablo Escobar, it seemed a bizarre choice to end on a cliffhanger nine months before he died. But as KILLING PABLO makes clear, the story afterwards is just as fascinating as what went before. Perhaps even more so. It basically makes up the second half of this book and I can see entirely why Netflix producers wanted to split it into a second series.

(Myself and Mrs Jameson, even though we raced through the first series, have never got around the second series of NARCOS – with no doubt that disappointment playing a big part. I’m now pushing it much higher up our ‘To-Watch’ list).

This wasn’t quite the book I was expecting. I was actually looking forward to some true crime, but what I ended up with was a book about civil war. Undoubtedly that’s what it would have felt like if you were a citizen of Columbia at the time, with a state at war with another state within. It’s a fascinating tale, filled with rich characters who Bowden draws quickly and efficiently. A book to make me really happy that I spent the early nineties in tranquil South Wales, rather than Pablo Escobar’s Columbia.

Mark Bowden first had me at Black Hawk Down. His mastery of narrative nonfiction, weaving hundreds of interviews and countless hours of research into an as-it-happens story is particularly useful in the stories he tells - the stories in the niches. Prior to this book I had last read his nearly 1000 page Guests of the Ayatollah, which told the story of the Iranian Hostage Crisis from start to finish.

Having visited Colombia, in particular Antioquia where Pablo was from, and Medellin, which was the seat of his reign of terror, I found it astonishing to read this story and find out what a dark, dark time Colombians lived in during 1989-1993 in particular.

The absolute destructiveness of the drug trade is probably never better illustrated than in these pages: the lives ruined in Miami and New York by cocaine, and then crack, and the thousands murdered in Colombia due to direct and indirect connections (and often, entirely random) to the drug trade. Worth a read, and it's short enough to finish in a couple leisurely afternoons of reading.

It’s hard to read when Tuyo - Rodrigo Amarante is constantly flying around my head.

This book is non-fiction but reads like a fiction due to how extraordinary his story is. What a b*st*rd.

Pablo is one individual I hope to never see in the library of life.

-¿El enemigo de mi enemigo es mi amigo aunque sea mi enemigo?.-

Género. Novela.

Lo que nos cuenta. Relato breve del ascenso del narcotraficante Pablo Escobar hasta ser el líder del Cartel de Medellín y largo relato de los hechos que desembocaron finalmente en su muerte.

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Insightful account of the hunt for Pablo Escobar.
I plough through this book well written book in no time.
Well worth a read.

This is clearly well researched, however the writing style is dry and uninteresting. Honestly, if I hadn't already watched Narcos I wouldn't be able to keep up with all the people as the author provides no thread line and this reads more like a book outline and not the finished product.

I remember the Pablo Escobar saga, as it played out at the time. I was a teenager in the 80's, when Miami Vice was the most popular show on TV, and there were about ten different kinds of hysteria in the United States about cocaine. It was described as the cause of most of society's ills, and would be the undoing of our country - it was completely addictive, nearly impossible to quit, and the vast majority of people even tangentially involved with transporting it, selling it, buying it or using it were destined to die a very horrible death, probably taking innocent others with them, and all the while, the market for it continued to grow. The pop culture depiction of it, and those associated with it, undeniably glorified it, in part because the decade of the 80's was an era that embraced excess and everything that went with it, and in part because the people who wrote the books, TV shows and movies that ostensibly spoke out against cocaine tended to themselves be cocaine users.

Escobar fit right into that. I think he understood how the mania fit into the era, and that he could make untold amounts of money from it. And he understood his own country, and knew what he could get away with, which was just about anything. So he became an emblem of the excess of the 80's, and he became famous, at the time, for having so much money that he spent $2,500 per month on rubber bands to wrap up his cash, which he kept hidden in barns and buried in fields, and had to write off approximately 10% of his total cash reserves because it was eaten by rats and other rodents. And part of that excess was the violence and cruelty he and his minions used to maintain their share of the market, and people around the world were afraid of it, but they found the drama inherently compelling and in a weird way, I think they kind of liked it. And I think he knew that, and played upon it.

Bowden's book doesn't focus as much on Escobar's rise to power, but it more a description of the campaign to get him. And it is an inherently interesting story, because even after the United States got involved, and even after the Colombian government became fully committed not only to stopping him, but to actually assassinating him, he still kept on for a surprisingly long time. What's most interesting about it to me, and what I would like to have seen Bowden address in more detail, was the legality behind the involvement of the U.S. The U.S. said the cocaine trade was a threat to national security, and based upon this spurious argument, began conducting military operations inside another sovereign country.

In a sense, Escobar became a sort of a symbol of Colombian nationalism, especially early in the campaign when he was arguing against extradition, because he said it ran counter to the notion that Colombia could and should handle it's own internal affairs. In a weird way, Escobar was like a Colombian Larry Flynt, a nauseating emblem of an interesting and legitimate point of constitutional law. He actually had a point, but it was lost in what an irredeemable dirtbag he was.

Bowden's book is well-researched and covers the details of the hunt for Escobar and its results in great detail. It reads a lot like "Blackhawk Down," which was also meticulously researched and an incredibly clear accounting of a specific series of related events. It's clear that Bowden is a journalist, and a very good one, because the book reads more like a long magazine article, rather than a book. At times, it became a little difficult to stay with, I think because it read like an article, because that's how he's used to writing. It was full of really interesting detail, and it was put together in a logical and comprehensive way, but it just doesn't flow like a book.

I was told this book would be a historically accurate version of Narcos in response to my sudden desire to watch Narcos. Never ended up watching Narcos, but this book was Crazy stuff! I appreciated the historical and political context to Pablo Escobar’s rise, reign, and downfall - and the associated rise of the global illicit narcos market.

“Diplomacy and war spring from different philosophical wells. The underlying premise of diplomacy is that people, no matter what their differences, are well-intentioned and can work together. Warriors believe in intractable evil. Certain forces cannot be compromised with; they must simply be defeated.”

The term "stranger than fiction" is what comes to mind as I sit to write my thoughts on Killing Pablo. There were so many times throughout the reading of this book that, had it been simply a fictional story, I would have been put off by how over the top so much of it seemed; how unbelievable the story was: the ineptitude and corruption of the Colombian government, the blundering nature of bureaucracy, the striking similarities between thier oligarchy and our "democracy", the charm of Pablo while he commits unspeakable evils, the influence of Pable, the difficulty in finding one man, even when all the top government agencies know what city he is in, all of it worked together to make a story almost unbelievable -- except that it is true.

Beyond simply telling a true, if incredibly wild, story, Killing Pablo is both an engaging read and a thought provoking exposé that made me consider the practical aspects of dealing with evil men that I had not considered before, as well as lending further insights into the corruptibility of government by both the lust for power and the fear of those who have it.

I unequivocally recommend this book, all the while wishing it were simply an unbelievable fiction.

The book has got a nasty streak of annoying repetitiveness within it. It seems like characters are often reintroduced with a line or more after every few pages which can make following the narrative a bit jarring from time to time. However, despite its shortcomings. Killing Pablo can still be an entertaining read. Its fascinating to go through the accounts of political situation in Colombia during Pablo Escobar's heydays and his subsequent fall, with the climax of Pablo's hunt being some of the most nerve biting stuff I've read in a while. Credit must also be given out to the author in making this book feel more like a thriller than a non-fiction book. Overall, its a great book to read if one is willing to set aside its shortcomings.

Another good effort by M Bowden

Interesting look at the hunt for Pablo E...more context than one would see in Narcos, at the least more detail. Intriguing when one considers the complexity of the larger drug war.