THE FRENCH CONNECTION: The World's Most Crucial Narcotics Investgation

If the text is to be believed, as well as the subtitle, then the author has probably told the world far more than the p.r. departments of the N.Y.C. Police or the F.B.I. would care to have known. In detailing the 1962 case and all the hard and patient work that went into pulling in the people responsible for the biggest (@ 112 lbs.) shipment of pure heroin to the U.S. and recovering the heroin too, some of the sloppiest inter-agency coordination (or lack thereof) is also revealed. Of course, in a fictionalized recreation, you can't be too sure of what's true and what's exaggerated for never have readers been given less credit for intelligence (i.e.,. . . the thoughty-thought attributed to one of the French heroin shippers is: ""How I want to take a pipi he thought to himself disconsolately""). N.Y.C. detectives Eagan and Gross, chiefly responsible for latching on to the Mafioso receiver, are given locker room dialogue also--all in the interests of realism which is badly served thereby.