Confidential Source Ninety-Six

July 3, 2017
In this straightforward yet guarded memoir, confidential informant Caribe provides an insider view of the criminal underworld in Southern California. A top lieutenant for the sadistic drug lord of a Mexican cartel, Caribe was arrested in Utah with 30 kg of cocaine and cut a deal with the feds: in exchange for a clean slate, he’d take down his boss. Failure would mean either years in prison or violent deaths for him and his family. Suspended between fear and hope, Caribe soon discovered he had a knack for a very dangerous game. Caribe, writing with NYPD detective Cea (No Lights), provides an absorbing, albeit self-serving, account of his fall from crime and rise as a crusader for justice. It was love for his wife, he explains, that led to his switching sides, not his arrest (which he argues wouldn’t have stood up in court). He admits to no part in his boss’s brutal violence and offers pro-forma regret for his role as a cocaine smuggler. Unfortunately, the near-complete absence of information about his background leaves him as opaque on the last page as he was on the first. Aficionados of stories about undercover policing and drug syndicates will enjoy the precise descriptions of the cat-and-mouse games throughout, but for those seeking greater insight into the author, this volume offers little more than an alias.

June 15, 2017
A hard-boiled memoir from a former drug dealer who switched sides.Caribe's author biography credits him as "the most successful confidential informant in U.S. law enforcement history in terms of dollars of narcotics whose seizure he has helped facilitate," and Cea is a former New York City detective who has written a memoir (No Lights, No Sirens: The Corruption and Redemption of an Inner City Cop, 2005, etc.) and worked as a producer on the Discovery Channel show Flipped. Consequently, this book combines the adrenaline-rush pacing of pulp fiction with a memoir's grounding in truth. "The Beltran brothers were a combo of Pablo Escobar, Pol Pot, and Attila the Hun all rolled into one," write the authors, who go on to describe them as "two ruthless killers responsible for thousands of murders in Mexico and the United States." Caribe worked for the "ruthless, hard-hitting Cuban thug" who represented the Mexican cartel in the U.S., a criminal every bit as much a bad guy as the Beltran brothers. Helping push those drugs for a decade might have marked Caribe as a bad guy himself, but in this narrative, he is a loving husband and father who somehow happened to make a wrong career turn and decided to turn his life around, fortuitously, just before his arrest, which he calls "the best thing that could've happened to me." The rest of the book shows the process by which he made his deal to "switch flags" and set up a couple of major drug busts worth many millions before settling into his identity as "C.S. 96" and ultimately finding redemption as an ordained minister. Caribe's memory for paragraphs of quotes tests credulity as nonfiction, but the pacing and tone should satisfy readers hungry for the real nitty-gritty. A suitably grim inside look at the front lines of the drug war.

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June 15, 2017

This book offers the true story of Caribe (a pseudonym), a confidential informant who spent more than two decades gathering and providing information to authorities while working his way inside some of the largest drug operations in the world. Coauthored with Cea (No Lights, No Sirens) but written from Caribe's perspective, it promises intrigue like the films Donnie Brasco or Rush. Instead, the writing removes the reader from the gritty reality that would benefit Caribe's singular experience. Rather than getting into the psyche of a person who would be killed if the facade ever slipped, the reader is confronted with cliches and language that one would expect to find in a text written by someone pretending to have lived an exciting life as an informant. VERDICT This true crime account might be enjoyed by those who are looking for a television- or movie-style version of these real-life events, instead of a more psychological study of a life on the line and based on lies. For fans of Christopher Mark Kudela's They Call Me Krud and the film Firewalker.--Ryan Claringbole, Wisconsin Dept. of Pub. Instruction, Madison

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