A master criminal and the step-by-step methods used to stop him permeate this gripping account that is both well-written and exhaustively researched ... Investigative journalist Shannon takes the reader beyond the fly-on-the-wall and puts them right into the heart of every action and situation ... One can practically see and smell everything as these brave agents provide a minute-by-minute account of the takedown of a master criminal. (LeRoux was arrested in 2012.) The level of research and detail — including exclusive interviews with the people involved — makes this a one-of-a-kind true crime tale.
... reads like a crime thriller. With her diverse sources from DEA agents and informants who agreed to testify against Le Roux, Shannon’s prose is very well-crafted and full of detail that places the reader right in the middle of all the action. The plot is fairly linear and is easy to follow. I truly enjoyed reading Hunting Le Roux and would recommend it to anyone who appreciates true crime.
Shannon’s description of the ruthlessly transactional Le Roux recalibrating his new reality to turn informer is priceless ... But Hunting LeRoux’s F-bombs-flying smell-the-funk 'proximity' to the action comes wreathed in fumes from its high-octane prose ... Shannon valorizes the DEA takedown and plays up the villainy of the lowlives Le Roux helped bust. But the deal he cut opened the door to a more lenient sentence for himself. Were officials played?
It’s unfortunate that Shannon’s account of the criminal genius Paul Le Roux appears in the same season as Evan Ratliff’s Mastermind, which covers just the same ground and is the more vigorously written of the two. Still, Shannon opens on a smart note given current events ... Shannon is very good on procedural matters and especially on how the American Drug Enforcement Administration pieced together its multiagency, multigovernmental case against Le Roux ... For sizzle, then, one wants to read Ratliff’s book first, but there’s plenty of steak here ... A painstaking, fascinating account of crime and punishment.
