The Disturbing Global Underworld of Paul LeRoux

She could rightly claim to be the Boswell of thugs and drugs. A veteran former correspondent for Newsweek and Time, Elaine Shannon emerged as a leading expert on the evil alliances of drug kingpins and corrupt officials with her tingling, real-life 1988 thriller, Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can't Win, which was adapted by acclaimed filmmaker Michael Mann for his Emmy–winning NBC miniseries Drug Wars: The Camarena Story and its Emmy–nominated sequel, Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel. 

Now, Shannon and Mann have teamed up again to bring her latest investigative tour de force, Hunting Leroux: The Inside Story of the DEA Takedown of a Criminal Genius and His Empire (William Morrow), to a theater near you. 

I was in Afghanistan, writing about the world heroin trade and how it finances war and terrorism; the Taliban, as far as I can tell, is 90 percent funded by heroin. One of my contacts told me about this very strange but powerful figure that he had been investigating. I took a quick right turn and found