The Last Narco ─ Inside the Hunt for El Chapo, The World's Most Wanted Drug Lord

"No `war on terror' was ever as terrifying as the ferocious wars of the drug lords in Mexico. In the Last, Narco, Malcolm Beith courageously takes us to the front lines in the heart of the Mexican badlands---and also right on the border of the United States. This is a threat to homeland security that is too often ignored by the press and public, and this is the book that brings it all into focus. A must read."---Christopher Dickey, author of Securing the City

"The Last Narco gracefully captures the heroic struggle of those who dare to stand up to the cartels, and the ways those cartels have tragically corrupted every aspect of Mexican law enforcement."---Laura Bickford, producer, Traffic

"Malcolm Beith slaps our faces with our ignorance. We barely know Mexico, and understand even less of its major industry, drugs. In The Last Narco, he gives us a look into a place our government either denies or lies about. This time you can run, but you can't hide"---Charles Bowden, author of Murder City

"The Last Narco is a brave and terrific headlong journalistic trek into the dangerous, and immensely relevant, terrain of drug trafficking in Mexico, and life and times of its foremost practitioner."---Sam Quinones, author of True Tales from Another Mexico

"Malcolm Beith risked life and limb to tell the inside story of Joaquin `El Chapo' Guzman Loera, Mexico's notorious drug capo. A novelist could not have presented a more intriguing or compelling tale of corruption, intimidation, murder, blood feuds, life-and-death negotiations, and the entrepreneurial skill of a near-mythic figure whom Forbes magazine named one of the world's richest men. Beith's superb book corroborates the cliche that fact is stranger than fiction."---George W. Grayson, professor of government at the College of William & Mary and author of Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?

As the drug wars in Mexico surge to new levels of violence and bloodshed, a courageous American journalist takes us deep inside the hunt for the man at their center---Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera-and tells the full story of the drug trade over the past thirty years.

The dense hills of Sinaloa, Mexico, are home to the most powerful and feared drug lord since Pablo Escobar: Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera. Responsible for uncountable murders since taking charge of the Sinaloa cartel in the 1990s, and reported to control the drug trade in at least seventy-eight U.S. cities, El Chapo is believed to employ tens of thousands of Sinaloa's 2.6 million citizens and is among the world's ten most wanted criminals. He also appeared on Forbes magazine's billionaire list in 2009 and 2010. With his massive wealth, his army of professional killers, and a network of informants that reaches into the highest levels of government, catching El Chapo was considered impossible-until now.

The all-out war between the cartels has isolated Chapo from former partners at the same time that the government has intensified its fight to restore order and end the terror. With El Chapo vulnerable as never before, Mexican authorities---with the help of DEA counterparts---are closing in, and journalist Malcolm Beith, who has chronicled the drug war for Newsweek and other publications, follows the chase with full access to senior officials and obtains exclusive interviews with soldiers and drug traffickers in the region, including members of Chapo's cartel. The Last Narco combines fearless reporting with the story of El Chapo's legendary rise from a poor farming family into the capo of the world's largest drug empire. Renowned for his charisma as much as his brutality, El Chapo's defiance of authorities and mythical exploits---including his escape from Puente Grande prison in a laundry cart---have made him a folk hero across Mexico.

Beith uses Chapo's story to uncover the secret history of the Mexican cartels' rise to dominance, from their early years assisting the Colombians to their days under the godfather of the industry.

Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, to the bloody power struggles and new barbarism of today. Chapo, who pioneered the use of aircraft and under-ground tunnels to transport drugs across the U.S. border, emerges as the last remaining narco of the old mold who ruled with class and lived by principles-unlike today's thugs who desecrate bodies and kill in public---and whose capture will signal the end of an era.

Informed by several years of rigorous reporing and narrated with the immediacy of an action movie, The Last narco is the first and only book in English to tell the complete story of El Chapo's rise to dominance. It is essential reading about one of the most pressing and dramatic stories in the news today-a true crime thriller happening in real time.

Malcolm Beith is a writer who spent several years based in Mexico City. He has written about the drug war for Newsweek and has contributed to Foreign Policy, World Politics Review, and Jane's intelligence Weekly. He has also reported from Iraq, Haiti, and Colombia.