The Takedown: A Suburban Mom, A Coal Miner's Son and the Unlikely Demise of Colombia's Brutal Norte Valle Cartel

About this book

If ever there was an odd couple.A suburban mom and a coal miner's son.Bonnie Klapper is an attractive, funny, off-beat but tenacious federal prosecutor who constantly thinks out of the box, often to the chagrin of her superiors. She is a full-time Assistant US Attorney, and a full-time mom to two sons, one of whom is a special needs child.Now retired Special Agent Romedio "Rooney" Viola --- first of US Customs then of the Department of Homeland Security --- is a slightly built, larger-than-life eccentric from West Virginia whose reputation was based on his obsessive-compulsive pursuit of fugitives.They were brought together by happenstance while both assigned to the "El Dorado Task Force," operating out of the World Trade Center. A raid on three wire remitters in Queens, New York uncovered huge amounts of drug money being sent to three tiny villages in a Colombian valley that no one had ever heard of.Neither the Justice Department nor the Treasury Department seemed terribly concerned with where the money was going, as long as this flow of drug cash was stopped.Bonnie and Rooney wanted to know more.Working together out of her tiny office in the implausible outpost of Hauppauge, Long Island, they set off on a 13 year journey to dismantle --- systematically --- the Colombian cartel responsible for 60% of all the cocaine coming into the United States.Her superiors Justice and his superiors at what was then Immigration and Customs Enforcement were quick to write them both off as dreamers. Management believed there were enough drug dealers in the greater New York area to keep everyone busy for a long time. Taking down a barbarous gang of traffickers and murderers 2500 miles away, was pure fantasy.But Bonnie wasn't so sure.And Rooney didn't care what they thought.Veteran author Jeffrey Robinson, whose previous international bestsellers on international organized crime and dirty money include "The Laundrymen," "The Merger" and "The Sink" tells this story of true grit, guile, determination, fighting the system, beating the system and overcoming overwhelming odds with the pace of a great thriller.This is "The French Connection" for 2011!