The extraordinary story of Paul Le Roux - one of the world's most prolific criminals, and the embodiment of a new generation of internet-enabled kingpins - and the US government's clandestine efforts to bring him down.
Evan Ratliff is an award-winning journalist and the co-founder and former editor-in-chief of The Atavist Magazine. As a longtime contributor to Wired, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Outside, and other magazines, he has reported from around the globe on transnational crime, sci-ence and technology, the environment, terrorism, and corruption. He is a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Awards, and his writing has been selected for numerous Best American collec-tions. His 2009 Wired story "Vanish," about his attempt to disappear and the public's effort to find him, was selected by the magazine as one of the twenty best stories in its history. He also cohosts the acclaimed Longform podcast and was a found-ing editor of Pop-Up Magazine, a live journalism event that tours the United States. He is the co-author of Safe- The Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World, about innovation and counterterrorism, and the editor of the collection Love and Ruin- Tales of Obsession, Danger, and Heartbreak.
With his relentless and fearless reporting, Evan Ratliff has pried
open a hidden world filled with high-tech gangsters and drug
kingpins and double-crossers and stone-cold hitmen. The story is as
fascinating as it is terrifying, and one that will hold you in its
grip.
*David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost
City of Z*
One of the most prodigious criminal masterminds or modern times.
Compelling... meticulously researched and written with a feverish
intensity. A masterwork of investigative journalism.
*Daily Mail*
A true crime classic.
*Publishers Weekly*
This is a riveting, mesmerizing, absolutely bonkers story about a
man as brilliant as he is villainous. You'll find yourself sucked
in, freaked out, and, ultimately, blown away by Ratliff's
storytelling and tireless reporting. The Mastermind is a
masterpiece.
*Nicholas Thompson, editor in chief, Wired*
The best book I read this year. It is the insane story of an
internet drug lord and the years it took to bring him down. I read
this with my heart in my throat—not just because of the violence
and mystery, but because it made me jealous as a journalist (how’d
he find that out?) and, though it is a true story, as a
novelist.
*GQ - Best Books of 2019*
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