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THE SUGAR MANBILL VIDALBACKGROUNDThe Sugar Man is a lateral sequel to The Clayton Account, bringing together many of the characters introduced in the latter, this time for a final confrontation in Brazil. But whereas the principal character in The Clayton Account was banker Tom Clayton and the theme money laundering, Clayton is no longer involved in this story. The setting has moved back to Latin America and centres upon the drug business itself with DEA agent Julio Cardenas as its main protagonist. One need not have read The Clayton Account to fully enjoy the characterisation or the story and in this respect The Sugar Man stands alone. Nevertheless, those who already met Cardenas, Morales, Harper, Cole, Speer and Noriega in The Clayton Account will enjoy an added dimension to this continuing narration. The Sugar Man is a thriller, centred in the world of illicit drugs, based on well researched facts. What the narrative conveys is the real presence of a colossal global business with an annual cash flow in excess of a trillion dollars and which most Western police chiefs are now admitting is responsible for more than half of total crime whilst consuming a similar share of police resources. Recent calls by very senior – and unusually brave – policemen in the UK, Europe and America to decriminalise drugs, stand on much more solid ground than is generally perceived. The cocaine business is no longer a definable, compartmentalised criminal activity, but a major economic force capable of acquiring governments, dominating national economies and rendering much of the developing world’s judiciary virtually useless. Thus, woven through the plot of The Sugar Man, is a second story, - an anatomy of an industry – subtitled The Cocaine Trail, and following every step from the cultivation of coca leaf in the Andean high plains to the delivery of cocaine powder in America as it transforms a dollar’s worth of raw material into a fifty thousand dollar consumer product. |
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