Snatched
From Drug Queen to Informer to Hostage--A Harrowing True Story
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Snatched is the electric tale, by the New York Times bestselling author of Blow, Bruce Porter, that tells the true story of a woman caught between two worlds, with her life dangling in the balance.
Raised an aristocrat in Colombia and educated in European schools, Pilar transfixes everyone with her charm and her guile. She also falls for dangerous men and finds herself drawn into the highest levels of the cocaine trade.
After two failed marriages and a harrowing escape from the drug life, she settles down to a quiet existence in Florida with her children--until her second husband tries to cut short his prison term by giving her name over to members of a new task force being formed by the DEA. They induce Pilar, now a middle-aged woman, to infiltrate the Cali cartel as the head of a vast money laundering sting.
Named "Operation Princess," the scheme leads to the seizure of tens of millions of dollars, along with some $500 million worth of cocaine and the exposure of hundreds of high-level traffickers, becoming one of the most daring and successful stings in DEA history.
But Pilar plays her part too well. Her success as a money launderer gets her kidnapped and then ransomed by a band of guerrillas in South America--and the US government refuses to negotiate. It's left to her low-level handlers in the DEA to get her back, before it's too late and her kidnappers discover they have a federal agent in their clutches.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Porter (Blow) offers another fascinating look at the international drug trade with this account of the dramatic life of a woman he identifies only as Pilar. She's born in Colombia to an upper-class family; her career as a flight attendant for Braniff airline leads to a fateful 1974 meeting with Ernesto Henao, the first of her two drug-smuggling husbands. Ernesto involves Pilar in his business, and she soon begins swallowing packets of cocaine to transport to Miami. Following a stint in prison, Pilar divorces Ernesto, only to marry Steven Cinnante, his former business partner. She attracts the attention of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and she ends up cooperating with them. Her unique access makes her invaluable as part of long-term intelligence gathering aimed at dealing the South American cocaine trade a fatal blow Pilar is one of the few informants actually "talking to the kingpins directly about how to handle their currency." In Porter's hands, Pilar's story will easily hook readers from start to finish; the book reads like an action-packed movie script. But the author eschews persuasiveness for pacing, with no straightforward explanation of how he corroborated information that came directly from Pilar or otherwise deemed it credible.
