Smokescreen: A True Adventure - Tapa dura

Described as 'A True Adventure', this is one of the most amazing stories about drugs and their shipment that I have ever read in either fiction or non fiction (this is, in fact, the latter). It starts off with Allen Long and others in a DC3 flying in to Colombia to pick up a huge cache of marijuana. They are warned not to land - rain has turned the primitive runway into a sea of mud - but they do. After loading the plane they crash through trees and have to land. The book is a series of incredible tales of success and failure with a somewhat grim epilogue which tells what happened to the main characters. I gather Canongate outbid other major publishers for this title, and it is a truly remarkable tale - indeed it makes a cracking read.

'Do you think you have the balls it would take to risk your life for a million dollars?' Allen Long certainly did. Balls like a bull elephant's - with charisma and cunning in the same large measure. But he needed to know that those around him could handle pressure. After all, they'd be violating Colombian and US airspace in a dilapidated DC-3 and landing on jungle mud tracks in bandit country. They'd have to avoid detection by America's most tooled-up law enforcement agencies and remain wired and vigilant at all times. They'd be pioneering dope smugglers - doing it with aplomb and panache like no one else. Their leader, the irrepressible Long, was only interested in the very best which for him was Colombian Gold. He was responsible for upping the quality and quantity of weed being smoked in North America in the 70s and he did so in the most outrageous and remarkable fashion. From the writer of the drug smuggling classic Snowblind, comes a true story more hair-raising, high-octane and heart-pounding than any fictional adventure thriller. Take a seat. And hang on for the ride of his life.