Bardzo fajne podsumowanie życia i "polowania" na Escobara. Pozycja raczej dla fanów serialu, którzy chcą mieć też trochę faktów na swojej półce. Myślę, że osoba, która wchodzi dopiero w temat może być zawiedziona tym reportażem, bo sprawa potraktowana jest od strony technicznej (akcje mające na celu złapanie Pablo, odwet, ataki itd), mało tu życiorysu barona (tu odsyłam raczej do serialu lub literatury biograficznej). Mocne 4 :)

Not a bad read and tells a good tale about the hunt for Escobar but lots of repetition and parts that seem like they've been copied and pasted into the book. After watching Narcos on Netflix it seems like a lot of the material from this book was used so watch that if you want to get the gist of what happened and be slightly more entertained or read the book and then watch the series to see it all come alive. 3 stars from me.

This is a thorough and well researched book. First we follow the life of Pablo Escobar - the man synonymous with cocaine trafficking - his upbringing, his family, his involvement in the drug trade and his role in the Medellin cartel, his short career in politics. Then we learn about the Colombian police and then military tasked with capturing Escobar, and then the involvement of the USA.

While we get a thorough background of Escobar, we see it from a strictly criminal and political perspective. We hear about his lavish lifestyle, his predilection for teenage girls, the fact he is a marijuana smoker, but doesn't meddle in the cocaine that makes him his millions of dollars. What we don't get is a wider picture of Escobar - the private zoo with the exotic animals, his car collections (other than when the authorities destroy them to taunt him), so not such a human picture. It does talk about the ebb and flow of public support for Pablo - as he poured his ill gotten money into housing, sports fields and the like he was seen as a Robin Hood figure, but violent bombings and public executions turned many against him.

The second part of the book outlines the authorities actions to take Pablo down. People who act against Escobar have a strange habit of winding up dead. Particularly judges. Policemen fare poorly too. Between targetted assassinations and bribe money, Escobar remains relatively free to carry out his business. As the Colombian police prove ineffective, the more they open up politically to the option of assistance from the USA. George Bush has ramped up his war on drugs and has decided that stopping cocaine at the border, or going after people distributing within the States was not yielding results - he wanted to target the source. To me this seems like America blaming Colombia for the American's who are buying drugs...

So Bush signed off on a heap on ambiguous requests for the US Embassy, DEA, CIA, NSA, Delta Force and an outfit called Centra Spike, who were a specialist digital surveillance team with high tech planes to use cellphone detection to trace the location of targets. I say ambiguous because typically the agreed scope it to either provide training or to provide expertise in surveillance, but clearly not to be taking part in missions / raids / executions (!). I am happy to admit I cant write a simple explanation of each of the above American parties, how they interacted with the Colombian authorities, and who did what. It was a complex web of people and politics. What is obvious is that the US was far more involved than legitimately authorised, they were morally well across lines (for example knowing about the kill squad called Los Pepes who claimed to operate as an independent vigilante organisation, when it was obvious the Colombian Police were feeding them information, and the US operatives were aware of this, and almost certainly knew that the leaders of that origination and financing was from the Cali cartel).

I probably need to leave my description of the details of the book there, as i will only get it tangled. I will say that the above sort of covers the middle part of the book, and that the last part is the demise of Pablo Escobar, and then these is a chapter of the aftermath. Lastly are pages and pages of the source material, and a thorough index.

So overall I enjoyed the book. It was quite fast paced, but also shared the drudgery of constant surveillance and lack of results etc, so contained some flat parts. It mixed it up enough following events from both sides of the story - we hear plenty about what Escobar, his cartel and his family are doing, and plenty about those pursing him.

I was certainly entertained while reading; I enjoyed the detail about the pursuit and ultimately elimination of Pablo Escobar. The politics and complexities added to the intrigue, and the source information gave reassurance of the legitimacy. As other have mentioned the tv series Narcos is a fictionalisation of events, and not intended to be a documentary, so people shouldn't assume it is accurate.

Finally, a couple of quotes I liked:
P30n  

He was violent and unprincipled, and a determined climber. He wasn't an entrepreneur, and he wasn't even an especially talented businessman. He was just ruthless. When he heard about a thriving cocaine-processing lab on his turf, he shouldered his way in. If someone developed a lucrative delivery route north, Pablo demanded a majority of the profits - for protection. No one dared refuse him.

n
P33

Pablo was establishing a pattern of dealing with the authorities which would become his trademark. It soon became simply Plata o plomo. One either accepted Pablo's Plata (silver), or his Plomo (lead).

4 Stars

Too many characters and I only cared about one of them, and I already knew what was going to happen to him. I would encourage you to watch Narcos instead of reading this book.

I learned so much from this book!
Living in Medellin, Colombia, I've wanted to gain a better understanding of this time period in Colombian history, and this was a great piece of that journey. It helped me understand so much more about the places, people, situations, and culture. There's no "one" unified story about Pablo Escobar and this time period, so I'm sure there are ways it's biased from an American's perspective, things it omits etc. But in general I thought it was a very readable book that struck a nice balance between being readable and thorough. I *do* think towards the end it was a bit overly detailed about the various people interactions with the Colombian and US govt, and I kind of lost track of which person did what thing. But. I think it also was probably a complicated mess towards the end, and hard to simplify!
If you're looking to learn more about the hunt for Pablo Escobar and the events during the years leading up to his death, this is a great choice!

At one point during the 1980s, Pablo Escobar was the seventh richest person on the planet, according to Fortune magazine. He owned fleets of ships, planes, mansions, cars, and property around the world. If he had been content to run a drug smuggling operation, he might still be alive. What sealed his fate was his need for renown. He wanted legitimate political power in Colombia. He gave interviews to newspapers, cultivated an image, and was elected to the Colombian senate. That set him on a collision course with the government. He had to be taken down.

As you might surmise from the title, this book is more about the manhunt for Pablo Escobar than the man himself. I enjoyed the first 80 pages or so that chronicle the rise of Escobar. The rest of the book is about the government efforts to track him down and kill him, and it gets into bogged down in minutia.

Pablo Escobar started out as a petty car theif and then muscled his way into the burgeoning cocaine trade during the '70s. As the book notes, there wasn’t a single aspect of the cocaine business that Escobar innovated, pioneered, or improved. He simply muscled his way in because it was profitable. Escobar was a gangster, not a business man.

During the ‘70s, when cocaine was at the height of fashion in America and Europe, Pablo Escobar made billions. The Colombian government at the time was willing to look the other way. Cocaine was bringing prosperity and status to an impoverished nation, and the government even passed laws allowing for the creation of new bank accounts that allowed for unlimited donations of foreign cash, no questions asked.

In addition to ruthlessly murdering his rivals, Escobar curried favor with the people of Colombia by building soccer fields and housing for the poor. His popularity peaked in the early ‘80s when he was elected to the Columbian senate, but he caused a minor riot when he tried to take his seat. At that point, some journalists and politicians began to push back against Escobar’s growing power. The result was a series of kidnappings, bombings, assassinations, and low level war. The US got involved at this point, sending military and intelligence personnel to Colombia to the assist the Colombian government in bringing Pablo down.

Pablo Escobar struck a deal with the government in the late ‘80s and for a brief period was incarcerated in a private “prison” that Escobar constructed himself, complete with hot tubs, large screen TVs, a soccer field, a movie theater, a bar, a disco, and an in-house gourmet chef. Guests came and went freely, and Pablo had young prostitutes brought in to entertain himself and his bodyguards.

When the government tried to move Escobar to a real prison, he escaped, and what followed was a 16 month manhunt that ended with him shot down, possibly by a US sniper, but probably by Colombian government forces.

The bulk of the book dealing with manhunt was a little hard for me to follow. Part of the problem is the number of US agencies involved—Centra Spike, Delta Force, the CIA, the DEA, the State Department, as well as several Colombian military and justice agencies—and keeping all the different groups and names straight in my mind was challenging. The various US agencies had ambivalent feelings towards one another. They were all eager to prove their usefulness in a post-cold war era and thus retain funding. And thus they were keen to achieve success on their own, with as little cooperation as possible.

There was also a vigilante group of Escobar’s enemies called Los Pepes that got involved, tracking down Pablo’s relatives and business associates and killing them in cold blood. These extra-judicial murders were almost certainly aided and abetted by American and Colombian intelligence, and thus raise thorny ethical questions about US involvement in the manhunt.

The series of failed raids, reprisal murders, and dead ends all blurs together after a while. It was a lot of unpleasantness. Kudos to Mark Bowden for his thorough research. I just got a bit bored with the detail.

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.”

Killing Pablo has an incredible plot, and very uninspiring writing and shoddy, unforgivable editing. This does not read like a book at all, but a first attempt at a (bad) magazine article. Being non fiction, this story is in the public domain. Yet, the pathetic research done by Mark Bowden puts one off, giving an extremely sketchy, uneven overview of the whole scenario and kills the supposed thrill emanating from the chase.

The story is simple, Pablo Escobar, kingpin of cocaine dealers, big shit in Columbia, extremely violent gangster, dreaded in the US so much so that millions of dollars and hundreds of personnel are poured into Columbia over a period of a year and a half to kill Pablo (without much concern over stanching off the cocaine supply). Escobar is crazy violent enough to affect policy changes in the government favouring himself by violence and bribes (any judge passing a sentence against him is blown away, any journalist writing is bombed, any public servant making any efforts to still Pablo has his entire family blown away with a car bomb, and specially, lots and lots of policemen killed by targeting, along with no concern for collateral damage to civilians. All this while, Pablo is spending on his old neighbourhoods, donating to schools and spreading propaganda for the masses becoming a sort of local hero at defying the USA. Then a rival vigilante organization called Los Pepes crops up which starts specifically targeting everyone ever connected with Pablo Escobar, including family members and civilians who have never been indicted but who prop up Pablo, like lawyers, bankers, corrupt officials. Every bomb that Escobar blows up, a rival bomb blows up at the houses of someone connected to Escobar. All this while, regular electronic surveillance is on, trying to track Escobar down all the while he keeps getting more and more panicked about a possible attack on his own wife and kids. This is Columbia in 1992-1993 where rival bombs are blowing up across the cities, vigilante policemen are picking up information from CIA agents, american soldiers are running around trying to track the world's richest criminal in one of the most poorest and electronically untraceable neighbourhood.

Bowden has not been able to piece together this naturally bombastic thriller of a story into any sort of a narrative. You never get any look into any of the characters, Pablo is nowhere in the book. Even the investigators who are covered in a little more detail have such shoddy, generalised sketches that it is evident that Bowden has never spent any time with any of them. To describe Juan Pablo Escobar (Pablo's 15 year old son), there are at least 10 places in the book that he is referred to as "a 6' tall chubby teenager". That is all he is ever described as.

There are countless frequent repetitions in the book, even so much so as to have used the same sentence over and over again as a rejoinder. And it is surprising how everything has been dumped into any sort of chronological order as if actually writing the book was too much effort for the author and he couldn't be bothered with it. So you would have a long, un-necessary chapter about Lt. Hugo Martinez, and then immediately into the next chapter, you would have a long paragraph explaining who is Lt. Hugo Martinez, and what is he doing in the story right now, as if the reader might have lost him while turning the page.

I had picked this book after seeing it on Breaking Bad, quite enthused by the idea that I could at least pick up a good book recommendation from a shitty show. I should have known better.

It is all the more sad since the background story is really striking, and that this was happening out there in the real world is scary and worthy of having a good book written about it. This is not it.

3.5 rating for all my books, as a detailed description of an historic event; definitely a 5 star rating.

After watching narcos, I wanted to get a more detailed look at the life of Pablo Escobar and the coalition of men that led to finally catching him and this book provided exactly that.

There’s a quote in the book about how an outlaw gains a following, and I believe after watching and reading about Pablo, he is the greatest outlaw ever. His power and influence and ability to do so much at once without any internet / computing technology is insane to me.

The most interesting part of the book for me was learning the main Columbian general who was hunting for Escobar, his son was the one manning the radio technology that finally led to pinpointing where Pablo was. He tried to resign and give up many times but fate wouldn’t let him! He also firmly believed in this “new tech” his son was using and knew that was how they would beat Pablo.

Would recommend to anyone who enjoys history.

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.

I was impressed with the reporting that this book would have required, especially for a U.S.-based author writing about Columbia's underworld. While Pablo Escobar remains a household name nearly two decades after his 1993 death, I knew almost nothing about his brutal life and the also brutal effort to kill him.

I think I bought this audio from an Audible sale, because #1 Mark Bowden wrote Black Hawk Down so how can this be bad and #2 I love true crime and learning about sociopaths. I've watched some of Narcos (not all of it, but I shall return) and I'm a student of Godfather and Scarface, so I kinda knew what I'd hear in this book. Still, this is crazy crazy stuff that never ceases to shock me.

Bowden gives us a little background of the type of Colombia that Pablo Escobar was raised in. Between 1948 and 1958, there was a bloody civil war between two political parties called the La Violencia. Basically it was a free-for-all...think The Purge movie...where 25,000 soldiers, police and rebels were killed plus over 200,000 civilians. Born in 1949, this is what Pablo saw as normal. He smoked dope and got in trouble, escalated to auto theft, then drifted into drugs. Drugs, particularly cocaine, was how he ultimately made his money (he was worth $30 million when he was killed in '93). But it was the violence left in his wake that made him one of the most wanted men in the world. He bribed police, political officials and judges. If that didn't work, he killed them. He killed politicians, then became one himself. He built housing and soccer pitches and fed the hungry one day, the next day he'd kidnap an enemy's family for ransom then kill the hostage anyway. He spent a great deal of his last years on the run from the Colombian and US military, and even a vigilante group called the Los Pepes formed that declared open season on all of Escobar, his family and his business associates. Ultimately he was shot and killed in the ongoing manhunt by Colombian National Police. Because of the Robin Hood image he had cultivated throughout his life, Escobar's death was extremely controversial and he was greatly mourned by the country's poor.

Bowden seems to do a pretty thorough job of recounting the details of this reign of terror. It feels like it came straight out of the movies. The writing, however, was dense...full of names and facts...and was hard to focus on this via an audio format. Additionally, Bowden narrated the audio, and he wasn't the most dynamic voice to present this information. I found my mind wandering. Authors are not always the best choice, I wish publishers would rethink these decisions.