An extraordinary story with a muddled execution.
A freighter smuggling kidnapped Chinese children into the United States is commandeered by the authorities in Rocha’s debut novel.
In 1995, Phil is an Immigration and Naturalization Service senior special agent assigned to its Organized Crime and Racketeering Unit, sometimes referred to as “Strike Force.” When a Chinese freighter in the Pacific Ocean is stopped and boarded by members of the U.S. Coast Guard, they discover 160 illegal immigrants, clearly headed for the United States. Phil is sent to Wake Island to interview the passengers, and he soon realizes that about 30 young boys are also onboard who aren’t related to the adults. He quickly uncovers the dark truth: these kids were kidnapped from their families to be sold into slavery, and many have been the victims of grim abuse, including rape. Phil is able to determine who the “snakeheads,” or smugglers, are, and their leader in the United States strategically applies for political asylum in order to avoid repatriation back to China. Much of the book reads like an official governmental record: there are the transcripts of testimony given by the kidnapped boys (in Chinese and English); transcripts from an asylum hearing for one of the snakeheads; notes from the interviews with the passengers; and even grainy black-and-white photographs. There’s also a subplot that follows a Russian spy who offers Phil (and Sharron, an FBI agent and Phil’s good friend) information about the sale of a nuclear bomb by the Russian Mafia. Rocha spent 30 years doing exactly Phil’s job, and so he confidently writes about both the nature of human trafficking and its investigation. The plotline about the smuggled children, in particular, is as mesmerizing as it is sad. However, the author calls his work a “quasi-fictional account” while also saying that he aims at the “pursuit of truth and accuracy”; the result of this is that the reader may be left confused about the line between creative contrivance and actual history. The subplot involving the Russian Mafia also seems completely gratuitous. As a result, it’s not clear why Rocha didn’t simply write a nonfiction memoir.
An extraordinary story with a muddled execution.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5028-2820-0
Page Count: 174
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author brings the case for judicial redress before the court of public opinion.
A former Justice Department lawyer, who now devotes her private practice to federal appeals, dissects some of the most politically contentious prosecutions of the last 15 years.
Powell assembles a stunning argument for the old adage, “nothing succeeds like failure,” as she traces the careers of a group of prosecutors who were part of the Enron Task Force. The Supreme Court overturned their most dramatic court victories, and some were even accused of systematic prosecutorial misconduct. Yet former task force members such as Kathryn Ruemmler, Matthew Friedrich and Andrew Weissman continued to climb upward through the ranks and currently hold high positions in the Justice Department, FBI and even the White House. Powell took up the appeal of a Merrill Lynch employee who was convicted in one of the subsidiary Enron cases, fighting for six years to clear his name. The pattern of abuse she found was repeated in other cases brought by the task force. Prosecutors of the accounting firm Arthur Andersen pieced together parts of different statutes to concoct a crime and eliminated criminal intent from the jury instructions, which required the Supreme Court to reverse the Andersen conviction 9-0; the company was forcibly closed with the loss of 85,000 jobs. In the corruption trial of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, a key witness was intimidated into presenting false testimony, and as in the Merrill Lynch case, the prosecutors concealed exculpatory evidence from the defense, a violation of due process under the Supreme court’s 1963 Brady v. Marylanddecision. Stevens’ conviction, which led to a narrow loss in his 2008 re-election campaign and impacted the majority makeup of the Senate, seems to have been the straw that broke the camel's back; the presiding judge appointed a special prosecutor to investigate abuses. Confronted with the need to clean house as he came into office, writes Powell, Attorney General Eric Holder has yet to take action.
The author brings the case for judicial redress before the court of public opinion.Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61254-149-5
Page Count: 456
Publisher: Brown Books Publishing Group
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
