New York: Penguin, 2015 ISBN 9781594205507
I have previously reviewed Gomorrah, the book that made Saviano's name as a writer. That polemic against the Camorra, written with the heart-felt rage of a local who saw its effects on the city and the people he knew, was a deserved best-seller.
Zero Zero Zero takes a wider view, at the World-wide epidemic of cocaine. Starting where else but in Colombia, Saviano shows us how the big cartels were created, and then overtaken by their Mexican middle-men. As always the Italian connection is not too far away, with the 'Ndrangheta most involved in the trade in Europe. However, Saviano shows us that everyone's involved in the trade in cocaine, from El-Salvador to Spain, Russia to Australia.
The trade is a river of gold to those who can manage it and who are ruthless enough to corrupt and kill. Saviano is adept at providing a list of murders, kingpins (and queens), stings and prison sentences. He also shows the reader how money and drugs eats its own, with cartels, mini-cartels and micro-cartels being created, warring and being destroyed all the time, either through the work of law enforcement agencies or other drug groups.
The reader of Zero Zero Zero is at turns horrified, disgusted, and lost in the minutiae of this history. The one theme that comes through is just how enormous the trade is, driven by an insatiable demand on the streets for Cocaine.
There is no doubt that Saviano is driven by a need to uncover this criminal activity - to his own detriment - and after more than three hundred pages of exposition the reader comes to the same conclusion as Saviano: the only solution is legalisation, but that is the wrong solution.
A powerful book, and worth reading.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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