I don't know if Douglas Valentine is brother to Gary Webb, but judging by the way they both write, their minds must be somehow connected. Both authors get so busy cataloging details of the who, what, when, where, why and how that -- to this reader -- their works seem unreadable, stupefying, incomprehensible.

I hold an MA in magazine journalism. I know what the profession demands of practitioners. I know that the books those two authors did on drug crime and drug criminals is hard, dirty, deadly dangerous work. Gary Webb, in particular, paid with his career and his life for names and facts that he gathered and published in his "Dark Alliance" doorstop.

Speaking strictly as a writer, however, I think there comes a time in any journalistic effort when one should stop cataloguing facts and start writing a story. Webb, in particular, got his teeth into a story that should have made a hair-raising thriller and used it to produce a stultifying read.

Valentine, for his effort, told us how a bunch of federal cops (now mostly dead) turned drug-law enforcement into a criminal enterprise. It could have made a lively and useful history, but the author's method turned the material into a paper brick. ( )

This is a fascinating, ultimately depressing book on the real War on Drugs. Dealing primarily with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), a hopelessly underfunded, overworked division of law enforcement, Valentine carefully notes and documents the policies that led to the War on Drugs being subverted by the 'needs' of national security. And, ultimately, to the end of the FBN at the hands of bureaucratic rivals and national security interests. ( )