The Empire of the Wolves

By Jean-Christophe Grange

    A chilling account of how the rest of the world deals with Terrorism and drug smuggling in cultures that thrive on those forms of livelihood. This book takes the reader on a ride through the subcultures of Paris and the slavery of people in sweatshops and drug centers for the traffickers, and on to Istanbul, Turkey. It leaves the reader a bit breathless as the events unfold with stark reality and pure horror. We in America live in a very clean world, and many people do not even realize that there is the possibility of those types of cultures and happenings. Especially not in our ivory tower pure lifestyles. However, in fact, it is a daily reality for many others in the world, and it is time that this country and our people look at the brutality that happens in other places as a daily course of life. The underground in Paris and the police force that is trying to deal with it becomes a total reality because of a mistake. This book takes you on a ride with many turns of fate and brutal murders that all too easily, could become the way of reality in our world if left unchecked.

     A very determined young police officer, an older, retired brutal cop who has turned to the dark side of the law and ways of handling terrorism, several related coincidences and a woman's life all become the keys in solving this lapse of memory of faces, a seemingly innocent person's dealings with bouts of amnesia. An idealistic scientist has lost his life to drugs. A psychiatrist wanting a bit of spice in her life and a child only to find one in a waif who is in trouble but does not know why. A police force that has no idea of what they are looking for until it is far too late for any of them to stop it from happening. Life goes on, and people die, for the parts they played as unsuspecting bystanders in the drama. Makes you think twice about how the rest of the world deals with and perceives the use of certain drugs and why. A quick visit inside a mental hospital, to sweatshops, first-hand looks at underground hostility and of survival with guts out force.

        This book takes the reader on a journey that spans several locations and countries with stark realistic details that the author had to know firsthand to write about so succinctly. It is a very European style of writing and description, that in all reality, I had a hard time following when I first picked up the book, but after about the third chapter, started getting the hang of the locations and meanings. Good job writing a hard story, Mr. Grange in trying to describe an underbelly of society, you did an excellent, authentic study. Lets the reader know what much of the rest of the world knows already, and what many gentle Americans do not want to understand. Very enlightening, while keeping a person interested until the cliffhanging different unsuspected ending wraps it all up. This book is a suspense/mystery reader's trip through the mind and exotic locations while not leaving your easy chair in the living room.