Rating: 
Summary: Book of the Year
Review: This is a fascinating, hair-raising, sometimes hilarious and sometimes tragic account of the brave men and women who went behind the lines in child sex slavery rings, told by retired Interpol officer David Race Bannon in his own words. Having long been vaguely aware of the existence of Interpol, I was looking for an introduction, something showing the sweep of the operations. I found exactly what I was looking for in this book. It was well written, and Bannon's first-person account made everything seem that extra bit closer. Even among people who have heard of Interpol, few are necessarily aware of exactly what the Interpol sub-directorate Archangel did or what they contributed to the war against child sex slavery. This book goes some way to redressing that, and offers a fascinating insight into how Archangel was formed and the missions it carried out. This is a story of struggle to create an agency from the ground up, and of tremendous courage of unsung heroes. Archangel would train agents, who were then sent on undercover assignments. These agents had many notable successes. They had a mission to find, in the words of their supervisor, "these beasts" that prey on children and sell them all over the world. Their range of operations was impressive: from Thailand to Belgium to the United States, the team did their best to catch the beasts. Bannon has a moral dilemma with the torture and sometimes deaths of the criminals, but he is very self-effacing: he doesn't dwell on the obvious and terrifying reality that HE and HIS TEAM were also subject to torture and death if they were caught. Archangel's greatest impact was in Thailand, but in the end, the greatest value of Bannon's work is publishing this book and alerting the world to this "evil." Bannon's account is excellent. One doesn't often get a sense of being there on the front line but, as an introduction to the subject, this is very satisfactory. It is as good an introduction to this thrilling and moving subject as we are likely to get. Race Against Evil is well written. It grips you from the start and makes you marvel at the bravery and commitment of these people. It is not a comprehensive overview of Interpol, but it has a personal quality about it that makes you more involved in the whole story. This is my book of the year. I would be happy to recommend it as a first read, and the bibliography and footnotes give ample opportunites for further reading if you want them.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping, a scary look into the evil & depraved in society
Review: Superb, though the subject matter is not appealing. David Bannon has written a fantastic insight into the world of fighting child trafficking. This book was never far from hand and I felt compelled to read at every opportunity. The fact that Bannon comes across not only as such a genuine and gifted person but as someone who overcame his past should be an inspiration to us all. His work has helped to stop a multitude of gut-wrenching acts of pure evil. Proof enough that he has an invaluable gift and we all should be indebted to him for sharing some of this with us in an extremely well written and thought provoking book. Crimes of this magnitude will cast their shadow over times and places in Bannon's life for ever and no matter how hard he tries he will not forget. He endured this for the good of us all helping to rid our streets of unimaginable evils that can lurk far, far closer to home than you may think!
Rating:
Summary: Pure, powerful, sad, beautiful
Review: This book is one of the most powerful, pure, sad and beautiful true stories I've ever read. I heard the author on radio in Toronto and his raw commitment to fighting child sex slavery really moved me. The book is just one step further into the world that he fought for so many years. Very moving and well written.
Rating:
Summary: Solid professionalism
Review: "Race Against Evil" is a true crime autobiography that is skillfully crafted. It has the patience to build real suspense instead of trying to substitute cheap thrills. It's climax is a sustained sequence involving three parallel lines of action, and we're reminded of the best true crime biographies of the past, such as "Serpico," where everything depends on a meticulous and dangerous scenario. The art of true crime is not in recitation of dull fact. We must be involved. The raw details must be siphoned and told truthfully, painfully, and above all in a manner that gives us enough information to take us into the tension of the real events. This book is an exercise of traditional craftsmanship. This week I met David Bannon in Colorado. He was speaking on child sex trafficking. "We must band together to stop it," he said over and over. His voice was raw and filled with truth. There was much power there, barely contained, and the entire audience was riveted at the purity of his commitment, deeply felt and earned through years of sacrifice. Who would have guessed that Bannon, a one time Interpol officer and hit man, could write of his life in a noir style that's so lean and involving? "Race Against Evil" explains itself as it goes along, so that by the end we more or less understand how Interpol works. Bannon has effectively allowed us to experience events as he discovered them. It is very hard to write a true crime book like this, where life's coincidences and loopholes are presented clearly, where the key moments involve little dialogue, and where the surprises, when they come, have been prepared for, and earned. To live such a life is hard. To write so well of it is remarkable. Bannon's colleagues are revealed as complex and colorful, and their relationships flash with humor and a little mystery. The dialogue has a nice hard humor to it. When Bannon calls a long-time colleague, the conversation is spare, cutting to the bone: "Long time," says Bannon.
"I've been hearing about you," the friend says.
"Guilty."
"Yeah, you are." Brick by brick, the book builds the pieces of Bannon's life. Obligatory elements are respected. We learn that Interpol is a vast network of law officers across the globe. We go into the labyrinthine streets of child trafficking. We're introduced to high-tech surveillance techniques and the low-tech grunt work that is part of every investigation. And then the cases build, unfold quickly, and of them I will say nothing, except that Bannon and his colleagues do incredibly difficult and ingenious things, and we are absorbed. That's the point. That we read in silent concentration, not restless, not stirring, involved in the suspense. Of course there are unanticipated developments. The risk of death. Twists and turns. But the book honorably avoids a copout ending of sentimentality or choosing a violent moment as a climax. Bannon shares his internal struggles without maudlin phrasing. Violence is part of his story, not all of it. "Race Against Evil" is true to its story, and the story involves characters, not recitation of cases. At the end, we feel satisfied. We aren't jazzed up by phony posturing, but satiated by the fulfillment of this true story that has never cheated. "Race Against Evil" is not a classic book, but as a true crime memoir it, like it's author, is solid professionalism.
Rating:
Summary: Plainly-told True Story
Review: Race Against Evil is plainly-told true story of how a normal young man was shaped into a cold-blooded killer. David Bannon has a gift for writing. There seems to be much left untold, deleted to protect victims or Interpol officers still serving to fight child slavery. The author's gift is knowing that less is more. He writes with almost poetic minimalism. Under the intensity and conviction, there is an unspoken sadness in David's memoir. The book ends on a note of bleak melancholia. Some authors feel it necessary to squeeze all books into happy endings (in the case of a violent true crime book, that means that the author chooses the right point in time to end on a high note, even if everyone fell into depression the next day to face a lifetime of consequences). That would be all wrong with this terrifying true story of a man coming to grips with international crimes against children, loss, love, faith, and with his own violent nature. David Bannon focuses on tones and colors, emotions and incidents of painful clarity, told so simply and honestly that we walk down the same alleys, unable to forget the moments of the author's sad, beautiful, terrible life. The book also has an introduction on Interpol, a thorough appendix on the specifics of Bannon's team, and an exhaustive glossary of terms. These are complimented by an appendix of numerous testimonials from Bannon's colleagues and photos of key personalities from the autobiography.
Rating:
Summary: Learning to be human
Review: "Race Against Evil" is a smart, hard-edged non-fiction thriller by David Bannon. We follow him as he transforms from young missionary to punk criminal to Interpol officer, exchanging one doom for another. As a young man, Bannon projects a naive sensitivity that is almost painful. By the time he is in prison, we see his feral hostility. He has no hope of escape; he is simply so anti-social that he doesn't care if he kills or dies. His sentence in South Korea seems interminable, but then a strange thing happens. He is released after his initial sentence of 90 days (he had been sentence to more time for crimes within the prison walls), and he finds himself at the mercy of an Interpol officer who uses him as a street informant. Later, Interpol finds new uses for the young man, entering him into intensive training. He is given a new identity, new values, new skills. It doesn't happen overnight. The training sequences are fascinating and disturbing. Bannon is tamed like an animal. In the early scenes Bannon barely seemed aware of his own identity; his transition from missionary to petty smuggler seemed to indicate a lack of direction. After Interpol re-shaped him, all gentleness seemed bleached from his soul. From Bannon's first mission, the miserable truths of fighting sex slavery in Europe and Asia come vividly to life. There is much tenderness and loyalty between Bannon and his colleagues, particularly his beloved Sidelle Rimbaud and his most trusted friend, Lee. For Bannon, these seem like brand-new emotions. "Race Against Evil" begins with the materials of a violent true crime thriller but transcends them with the story of Bannon's transformation. It is a surprisingly touching book: Bannon is in a trance of desperation and anger until he is awakened by his own violent acts and their painful results. But as he awakens to love from a woman (Shin) who knows nothing of his past or present, to the joy of his daughter, he also awakens to a world in which, sooner or later, he will have to pay a price for his life choices. One of the book's skills is the way Bannon so candidly and humbly shows his slowly learning that he is a man, how to be a true human, and how to enjoy being that.
Rating:
Summary: Deathless & Brilliant Simplicity
Review: Race Against Evil is pretty much in a class of its own. David Bannon writes a good memoir, full of crisp dialogue, violent action and brooding overtones of religious redemption.
It is a measure of Bannon's achievement that he can turn the horrors of his own past - and they are chilling - into a narrative that speaks for the whole of victimized children. David Bannon was a feared and religiously-inclined hit man for Team Archangel with Interpol. His tale is not just a memoir; it is a vital piece of our collective past.
Bannon takes on the criminals who control child trafficking and defeats them. One of his motives is revenge for the murder of his fiancee, but even before that happens he has an implacable hatred for child prostitution. 'This is the first time I'm glad to see someone dead,' he says of a murdered child molester. He is a good man in a bad business.
That at least is the surface reality of the book. But there is another level coiling away underneath, a subversive level in which Bannon questions the human cost of Interpol's assassinations of terrorists and human slavers. One woman loses her life because she trusts Bannon, others die in the line of duty, and a friend is lost to a grotesque crime. One colleague tells Bannon calmly, 'It's our karma. Everyone at Archangel has the same karma.' Bannon feels the loss of loved ones and his own soul deeply.
Bannon paints a luminous picture of the unusual life of a 'cleaner' (an Interpol agent of the 1980s) who hates and loves his job. Bannon is an engaging writer: he can be poignant or amusing (I particularly liked the description of prison life) and he has a wonderful knack of getting to the nub of a situation and the people around him. He reveals an unsentimental portrait of Interpol while capturing the essence of the period perfectly.
I bought this book several months ago and on first reading, I was absolutely shocked at the description of the first murder (of a child abuser with hundreds of photos of his acts). However, I was recently ill and, having nothing to read, I picked it up once more and have to say that it was one of the best things I have ever done. It was like discovering treasure.
I didn't want to put this book down, finding it to be finely crafted and compelling. Despite the disturbing subject matter, I thoroughly recommend this book. Although it's not for those with a weak stomach. This could be the saddest book you have ever read, but it is also as compelling a book as I remember reading.
The reasons for the war against child sex networks, the motivations, were mesmerizing. Bannon gives great insight into all the factors without opining or moralizing. He succeeds in giving you the humanity, the nightmare, the pathos, of the men and women who fight this unimaginable crime. The book is so moving, so touching that it makes you view life in a way you never have before.
David Bannon was a straight-arrow Mormon missionary who ultimately became one of Interpol's most notorious 'cleaners' or hit men--unbending, courageous, dark, guilt-ridden and painfully fallible. The way in which his boss, Jacques Defferre, was able to manipulate the young Bannon is grimly fascinating. Their relationship was both scary and compelling--that a young Bannon, even as an ex-con, was so naive in not realizing he was being studied and used. The true character of the crimes against children are never graphic, but neither are they ignored; Bannon's greatest art is his ability to face the horrors of life without dwelling on them. This book has a compulsive element that makes you become more and more fascinated the further you go on.
Bannon can be quiet and contained and effortlessly charming, but that Bannon is for surface and show. He's capable of viciousness as when he wreaks vengeance on a network that caused the death of a friend. The book dangles tranquility and hope precariously over a world of violence.
Bannon hopes he can draw a line between his home life and the scum he deals with at work. This is one reason the book is so insidiously chilling; Bannon continues on his mission despite its cost. Oh, he's right, of course, that child slavers are vermin; but Bannon's heavy moral dilemma offers no easy answers. There is a kind of ironic pessimism in every page.
Bannon's insight is the most fascinating thing I have ever read. The beauty of his moral ambidexterity is that he tells his own true story, while using it to reveal another story, so much darker, beneath. The story of child sex slavery; the story of Interpol's global reach; and the story of all that he experienced, told with great humility and candor. Bannon is a chastened man.
The title of the book is intriguing. Does Bannon race against the evil of those who victimize children? Or is there a deeper evil, within himself, the moral missionary who learned to revel in bloodlust, in revenge for the loss of his loved ones? There is a sense that he is still haunted by guilt: He has reformed, but has not made amends. In discussing God in the epilogue, Bannon says, 'I believe that murdered innocents rest in His arms and that someday, somehow he will help me to understand why there is evil in this world.'
Race Against Evil has the elements of a true crime book, but the freedom of an artistic memoir, written in deathless and brilliant simplicity; Bannon uses a genre as a way to study human nature. An implacable moral balance, in which good eventually silences evil, is at the heart of Bannon's life, and he is not shy about saying so.
Rating:
Summary: Vivid
Review: This is one of those memoirs of a difficult, violent life, that makes riveting reading. Clearly the author, David Bannon, felt he had something to tell, and he tells it vividly. Bannon offers an unforgettable evocation of the bitter crimes against children hidden in the world's dark undergrounds and each page seems steeped in the blood of his plea: "We as citizens of the world must band together to stop it." Bannon's words are gaunt and lined, marked with mortality. Places are strongly evoked: a small, isolated, squalid village or a towering city. Sometimes, though, Bannon's tale is vague and indeed he acknowledges this freely. He changes names of victims and active officers, but never wavers from his rallying cry: "We're here because they're out there." It is the nature of this underground that shocks us. This weird sense of anachronism makes this a riveting if sometimes uncomfortable read.
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: This book concentrates a lot on Bannon's past training for Interpol, carrying on from early days. Essential readiong for all die hard crime fans, and recommended to all.
Rating:
Summary: a closer look
Review: If you would like to know the true history of child sex rings that the world chooses to ignore this piece will educate you. David Race Bannon has produced a harrowing recent history of child smuggling and Interpol. This is a must read.
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