Product Description

'Do you think you have the balls it would take to risk your life for a million dollars?' Allen Long certainly did. Balls like a bull elephant's - with charisma and cunning in the same large measure. But he needed to know that those around him could handle pressure. After all, they'd be violating Colombian and US airspace in a dilapidated DC-3 and landing on jungle mud tracks in bandit country. They'd have to avoid detection by America's most tooled-up law enforcement agencies and remain wired and vigilant at all times. From the writer of the drug smuggling classic Snowblind, comes a true story more hair-raising, high-octane and heart-pounding than any fictional adventure thriller. Take a seat. And hang on for the ride of your life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #825133 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Robert Sabbag's astonishing "novel" Smokescreen portrays the real adventures of a real hero of the American underground. Allen Long began as a documentary film-maker following a number of drug dealers and smugglers through the highs and comedowns of getting illicit materials to those who most want them. He then decided, connoisseur that he was of the almost mythical Columbian gold, that smuggling marijuana himself may very well be the best way to fund his film--and the lavish Hollywood lifestyle to go along with it that soon made him forget his more artistic aspirations. Snowblind, Robert Sabbag's previous book, a classic account of cocaine smuggling, looked unlikely to be bettered but Smokescreen somehow manages just that. The book has a marvellous swagger: it is well crafted, cleverly paced and genuinely thrilling. It is also very funny. Opening with a highly tense report of landing on an invisible runaway deep in the Columbian forest (and barely making it because the rainy season had arrived), loading the best pot available to American-kind and then detailing the abortive attempt to get back to the home country to sell the gear, the novel then moves back in time and shows how Long became such a key player in the dope trade and how he came to be flying a DC3 into the most dangerous of the Latin American badlands. Smokescreen looks likely to establish itself as more than an underground classic. Sabbag is a fine writer and Smokescreen is a riveting read that will appeal to a much wider audience than the heads and hippies who will relish smiling knowingly along with the author's counter-cultural references.--Mark Thwaite

Review
Described as 'A True Adventure', this is one of the most amazing stories about drugs and their shipment that I have ever read in either fiction or non fiction (this is, in fact, the latter). It starts off with Allen Long and others in a DC3 flying in to Colombia to pick up a huge cache of marijuana. They are warned not to land - rain has turned the primitive runway into a sea of mud - but they do. After loading the plane they crash through trees and have to land. The book is a series of incredible tales of success and failure with a somewhat grim epilogue which tells what happened to the main characters. I gather Canongate outbid other major publishers for this title, and it is a truly remarkable tale - indeed it makes a cracking read.

About the Author
Robert Sabbag is the best-selling author of the cocaine classic Snowblind and the definitive book on the U.S. marshals, Too Tough to Die. His journalism appears in numerous magazines, among them Rolling Stone, to which he is a regular contributor. Witness Protection, based on his New York Times Magazine cover story, The Invisible Family, was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture.

Customer Reviews

By page three I realized just how dull my own life has been.
Smokescreen is the true account of Allen Long, the nineteen seventies Robin Hood of pot, and his bid to supply the American pot smoking fraternity with nothing but the best quality marijuana grown on this planet, Santa Marta Gold. After running short on funds to finish the making of a documentary on the farming and smuggling of marijuana into the states, the smoking of which had become one of the fastest growing pastimes since Adam and Eve discovered the apple, Allen Long decides to raise the cash with a one-off drug run out of Mexico, after which he never looked back, or finished the documentary.
Robert Sabbag takes you into a bygone world where Allen Long, a man with more bottle than united dairies, engages on one of the biggest dope smuggling operations as yet attempted. Pushing not only his luck but, unbeknown to them, that of his partners, far beyond any safe limits. Working directly with the Columbian dealers and farmers he embarks on a three-year roller-coaster ride of success and failure in which he evades death, capture, prosecution and worst still, marriage, without ever once carrying a gun. A terrific read.

Sky High in the Free World
This book very clearly illustrates the world of the marijuana user and small-scale peddler, who eventually turns to full-scale smuggling. As you would expect from a journalist the author deals (if you’ll pardon the expression) well with the complexities such a subject will inevitably carry.

The many colourful characters in the book are described well, often with the wry humour that the author has utilised successfully in his other book “Snowblind”. The somewhat larger than life main character, Allen Long, about whose life in the book is written, begins in the early days turned on and tuned out. As the book continues we see him metamorphosise through something akin to an airborne Elizabethan privateer, to a hard-nosed businessman in 60s and 70s America.

Mr. Sabbags portrayal of the Colombian “Gaujira”, the people who occupy these badlands and the extent even in those early days of the corruption that have crippled the entire nation are highly evocative. As well as this the way in which he describes the beauty of the less highly populated regions of that country is wonderful.

This is quite a fast paced story, in places it can almost seem jerky. However, it was a gripping book on a fascinating subject, that I found difficult to put down. I will look closely for the next work written by this author.

A fitting follow up......
With this the second book I have read of Rober Sabaag (Snowblind the 1st) I now rate him as one of the best writers I have ever encountered.I don't really know if I would say that Smokescreen is BETTER than Snowblind but I would say every bit as good. It is written with the same slick fast racing wit and prose that it's predecessor was and again is truly a book I found unable to put down.After reading the first few pages not only did I realise how boring my life was but also was considering entering the entrepenearial lifestyle as depicted of Allen Long.Long is seen to be a true modern day hero (given even that his exploits occured during the 70s) and along with his compadres all become a lovable group who you do truly hope survive and flourish in their smuggling business.A superb read and a worthy follow up to the excellent Snobwlind.Buy it NOW!