Greatest Crime

Viac o knihe

The following is the Author's Note: This novel is strictly fiction, but it is based on the blunt fact that drug smuggling is a multibillion-dollar industry nowadays, The files of The New York Times and Coast Guard and police records show that drug smuggling is as real, and as melodramatic, as any other kind of war. In addition to consulting official records, I have based this novel on many stories I heard during seven years of living aboard a yacht which was based in Miami and which often cruised the waters from Long Island Sound south to the Bahamas. As a World War II Coast Guard officer, I also was given much information by men who are still active in that embattled service. The Coast Guard could put a stop to activities of the sort described in this book, but it would need many more will-equipped ships, and many more men--in short, much money from Congress. Professional drug runners nowadays form a much bigger army and navy than the old rum runners ever did and they deal in vastly greater sums of money. Thousands of amateurs hear of all the "easy money" being made and try to get into the "action." The result is seldom reported because no one involved wants to talk about it. This book, of course is fiction. If it were factual, I'd be afraid to write it.