Rating: 
Summary: Moral Doubt & Solid Faith
Review: Race Against Evil isn't the most heroic true crime book ever written, but the subject of arbitrary punishment and moral doubt holds the reader's attention to the last page (at least it did mine). Profanity is held in check, probably much more so in the book than in the actual daily banter of the officers. When Bannon is alone with his supervisor, the two engage in serious discussions about the existence of God without ever drifting into ambiguity. There's no graphic sexual activity or violence, but the whole theme of Bannon leaving his mission calling for crime and then, later, Interpol, can be offensive if not viewed in the contextual umbrella of the author's fall from Grace into the depths of despair and finally, rediscovering faith and redemption. The abuse of children is handled tactfully but it is a subject that is ugly no matter how careful the writing. Some clergy are described as decent and God-fearing; others are the worst form of human evil. A Buddhist priest is seen in a positive light. Christian readers should be aware that this is a candid and painful book. The most positive content is provided by Bannon after his capture in North Korea, where he is stripped naked and tortured ruthlessly in an experience that led to an unequivocal rebirth, symbolically and literally, as his life was saved from certain death. Despite his constant moral doubts, Bannon developed a solid faith in Jesus that changed him from a disillusioned missionary, criminal and Interpol assassin into a devouted family man and devout believer. The chapter of Bannon and a good Christian family bravely facing a child abduction are legitimately moving. There are certainly other books in which to find a clearer Christian witness; but here it is, in a book that's more likely to be read by those most needing such a witness.
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Summary: What a thriller!
Review: We watched David Bannon on TechTV and I finished his book today. It's sad and really touching. I don't think I'll ever forget it. My first review was too much because he was so handsome on TV. My original review said: "Here is a real-life assassin forged of good American steel, shaped in Asian prison and cured in the crucible of European style: hardened, ruthless, coiled, lithe, dark and powerful; diamond-sharp, thoughtful, tender, sophisticated, charming, efficient, wounded, handsome, seductive, self-assured, and dangerous." I'll keep that and add that his book is so real and in a terrible way very beautiful.
Rating:
Summary: Moving Christian Book
Review: Dr. Bannon's book is a moving Christian story. I was moved to tears at the powerful remorse so clearly imbued within the words and at the miracle of the author's redemption. This is a book for mature Christians who can share the terror of evil through Bannon's eyes and rejoice with him as he rediscovers the power of good. We heard Dr. Bannon on a Canadian radio program while on vacation last week and were riveted by his profound candor and unswerving dedication to spreading this harsh but important message. I bought the book and read it within a few days. What can I add that to these many excellent reviews? Race Against Evil is disturbing on a visceral level, there's little doubt, because enslavement of children is a crime so devilish that we can't stand to face it. But we can't wish it away!
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Summary: Bannon Shows Us the Dark
Review: David Bannon is one heck of a storyteller. Race Against Evil is the book that will make you lock up the house, take the phone off the hook and just keep reading. You won't be able to put it down. He knows more about child molesters and how to track them than anybody in the world. In this chronicle of his remarkable and chilling career, David Bannon allows all of us to accompany him into unthinkably dark places where we find the bloody tracks of "the world's most sinister criminals" - child slave traders.
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Summary: A Christian family in Canada
Review: A compelling read. As Race's life changes form the simplicity of his earliest days, we see, with him, the corrupting impact of crime on the innocent. With him, and through his story, we come to put new pictures to the familiar story of child abuse. This is a book to read from cover to cover. It is hard not to be transported into Race's world and impossible not to understand, through him, something more about the terrible evil of the child sex trade. His is a shining example for the power of the spirit to triumph over evil; an eloquent firsthand account of one man's struggle to keep his faith in a world which had gone mad. Thank you, Race, for telling us your story.
Rating:
Summary: Qualified to judge
Review: I am a retired DEA Field Division SAC. After I heard David Bannon on the radio, I met him at a booksigning. Despite all his training to appear innocuous, I immediately recognized from his posture, the way he scanned the room with his eyes but not his whole body, his bearing, that Bannon had spent a lot of time with criminals -- in prison, undercover for Interpol, and chasing child slavers for an Interpol department called Archangel. Bannon was also abstemious, devoted to his daughter, and a conservative college professor whose many legitimate conferences and publications camouflaged his other work. Bannon's account of this complex, compartmentalized life is a rich stew of anthropological detail, confusion, and shame. It was only after Bannon quit Interpol and a national magazine published his story, around his daughter's twelfth birthday, that the author revealed the reasons for his long disappearances and scarred body: he had been an assassin, rumored to be responsible for more than a hundred killings. This heartsick memoir charts Bannon's attempt to come to terms with his past.Bannon's detractors are unqualified to judge him. They have not met him and know nothing of international criminal traffic. Even I am not educated about the inner workings of Interpol, but I have spent enough years undercover with the DEA to judge the man. I looked into his eyes and saw the man beneath the charming exterior. He knows things that only someone on the inside can possibly know, and he expresses emotions that only those of us who have seen evil face-to-face can possibly understand. I believe him.
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Summary: VIOLENT CRIMES, VIOLENT SOLUTIONS
Review: Grim tales of crime and punishment told in moving first person. In his literary foray into the dark territory of violent sex crime, Bannon invites readers behind the scenes of Interpol. But this is hardly another dark organization expose redux. The stories are fresh, and the depictions are not as grisly as those of other true crime books. The crimes and their perpetrators are no less monstrous, however, in chronicles that are as compelling as they are disturbing. From the media-popular assassination teams to a remorseless leader of a child slavery ring, to an overwhelming sense of remorse and moral confession, this title captures the best and worst of humanity. More importantly, in a genre where the reader is commonly a voyeur, Bannon goes to great lengths to avoid revictimizing survivors of violent crime and relatives of those whose lives have been lost. Over and over, Bannon renders sincere, indelible portraits of victims and their families, both before and in the aftermath of these crimes, exploring the labyrinth of disbelief, bottomless grief, rage and, sometimes, the strength they have mustered to endure the everyday. Their emotional turbulence is both stunning and provocative. At once gallant and crusading, Bannon has provided a tempered and clearly written work. Bannon has good reason to hate criminals who prey on the young: he watched them kill his fiance during a firefight. Here, Bannon profiles his own journey from missionary to assassin and details several incidents where his work helped put an end to the careers of "these beasts," child molesters and murderers. Not all his subjects are sexual deviants, however, for Bannon, who frankly recalls counter-terrorist assignments, seemingly would reserve a circle of hell for anyone who harms innocents. Fans of true-crime writing will find it of interest. Photos of Bannon in uniform and key individuals are provided, as well as an appendix with testimonials from colleagues.
Rating:
Summary: A Moving Record of Human Evil
Review: Race Against Evil is a terrifying account of the horror that turns a young boy into an agonized witness to the death of his friends...the death of his innocence...and the death and resurrection of his God. Penetrating and powerful, Race Against Evil awakens the shocking knowledge of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must not be allowed to continue. Bannon has taken his own anguish and imaginatively metamorphosed it into art with terrifying power. As a human document, Race Against Evil is almost unbearably painful, and certainly beyond criticism. To the best of my knowledge no one has written so moving a record of human evil.
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Summary: Unrelenting chronicle of vengeance
Review: David Race Bannon spent 16 years as an assassin for Interpol. His account begins at age 18, when he was inducted into the ranks of Interpol's Archangel team, and ends (hundreds of bodies later) with Bannon trying to piece together his tattered life. Throughout, he successfully conveys a sense of the siege mentality that prevailed every minute of every day, due to the daily barrage of violence. Names of slavers and terrorists flit across the pages in a confusing manner, but Bannon pushes the narrative forward with scarcely a glance backward, and, ultimately, names and incidents are not important. (A glossary is provided.) Unfortunately, Bannon had left Interpol before 9/11 and thus sheds little light on the current war on terrorism. Wholely repentant, Bannon today is dedicated to ending the global traffic in children. Bannon's autobiography features on its cover an running man, caught in the crosshairs of an automatic weapon. The man in the crosshairs is Bannon, who here tells his electrifying life story: an angry, humble, pained and stunningly violent odyssey through fighting child slavers, prison and redemption. The prologue reveals Bannon's strident message to readers: The hell inflicted on these children is real. We, who are citizens of the world, must band together to protect the innocent. Bannon is still fighting, only now for awareness of the traffic in human beings. But, then, the author has always been at war: His first year as a missionary in South Korea he killed a man in self-defense, a college student in a deadly riot, and for the next 15 years he led a life spent defending children by word, fist, and knife. He said of one child slaver: I figured it was a mistake to let this guy live a minute longer. Much of Bannon's memoir is a horrifying chronicle of abuse, betrayals, retaliations (between chapters Bannon spends much time in the hospital)-almost banal in its unrelenting bloodshed, made palatable mostly by the author's deep sense of personal loss and internal conflict. Eventually, Bannon renounces vengeance to embrace his new struggle. Race Against Evil is a savage document that gives, and asks, no quarter.
Rating:
Summary: Power to Move Us
Review: No other memoir has anything like the impact of Bannon's own words--as written here, by turns simple, poetic, inspiring, political, wise, and passionate. The story of a young missionary who fought to stop the abuse of children should never lose its power to move us. You cannot know the history of Interpol unless you know the story of David Bannon. In a medium with so many words, where some memoirs seem to go on endlessly, to read Bannon's autobiography is to look into a soul that will never leave you. He embodies simplicity, character and suffering. He tells the story that has caused so much debate: of how a simple missionary, sent to prison for smuggling, worked in Interpol's secretive assassination branch. How he lost his friends and loved ones and was captured by North Koreans and tortured until he was finally released in a "spy swap." The last third of Bannon's book seems to combine into one nightmare, in which his supervisors, enemies, criminals and captors, their faces twisted, loomed over him relentlessly. For Bannon, the audience reads suppressed or inner pain, finding exactly the right nuance in his written expression. To modern audiences, Race Against Evil is an unsettling experience--so intimate we fear we will discover more secrets than we desire. Our sympathy is engaged so powerfully with Bannon that his writing methods don't play like stylistic choices, but like the fragments of suffering. Exhausted, starving, cold, in constant fear, only 19 when he began with Interpol, he lives in a nightmare where the faces of those he tracks rise up like spectral demons. Bannon seems to have asked himself, What is this story really about? And after he answered that question he wrote about absolutely nothing else. Bannon's memoir creates fearful intimacy between himself and the reader. Bannon reveals his personal experiences in a series of startling images. He is reticent to opine. Often his silence seems to suggest that what happened was so far beyond the scope of written expression that no description of his feelings is conceivable. The emphasis on the dialogue insists that these very people did what they did. Bannon strips Interpol of its policy and righteousness and betrays its programs as hypocrisy that assaults reader's decency.
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