The Mastermind

With his relentless and fearless reporting, Evan Ratliff has pried open a hidden world filled with high-tech gangsters and drug kingpins and double-crossers and stone-cold hitmen. The story is as fascinating as it is terrifying, and one that will hold you in its grip. * David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z *One of the most prodigious criminal masterminds or modern times. Compelling… meticulously researched and written with a feverish intensity. A masterwork of investigative journalism. * Daily Mail *A true crime classic. * Publishers Weekly *This is a riveting, mesmerizing, absolutely bonkers story about a man as brilliant as he is villainous. You’ll find yourself sucked in, freaked out, and, ultimately, blown away by Ratliff’s storytelling and tireless reporting. The Mastermind is a masterpiece. * Nicholas Thompson, editor in chief, Wired *The best book I read this year. It is the insane story of an internet drug lord and the years it took to bring him down. I read this with my heart in my throat—not just because of the violence and mystery, but because it made me jealous as a journalist (how’d he find that out?) and, though it is a true story, as a novelist. – Taffy Brodesser-Akner, author of Fleishman Is in Trouble * GQ - Best Books of 2019 *Darkly fascinating and truly gripping. A crazy story. Ratliff reports exhaustively and writes soberly… a brilliant book… a suitably wild parable for a digitally deranged age. * Irish Times *If truth is stranger than fiction, then The Mastermind is the truest book you’ll read this year. The only thing predictable about it is how quickly you’ll turn the pages. * Noah Hawley, author of Before the Fall and creator of the TV series Fargo *A tour de force of shoe-leather reporting — undertaken, amid threats and menacing, at considerable personal risk. Ratliff’s reportage unfolds in crisp, atmospheric prose, and he brings a dispassionate eye to a milieu lousy with unreliable narrators, triangulating where possible to separate fact from legend. * LA Times *

As directors, we spend countless hours imagining heightened plots and memorable characters that will leave a lasting impression on audiences. The true tale of obsession, genius, intrigue, and vengeance detailed in The Mastermind is as gripping and cinematic as anything we could endeavor to conjure up.

Evan Ratliff is an award-winning journalist and the co-founder and former editor-in-chief of The Atavist Magazine. As a longtime contributor to Wired, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Outside, and other magazines, he has reported from around the globe on transnational crime, science and technology, the environment, terrorism, and corruption. He is a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Awards, and his writing has been selected for numerous Best American collections. His 2009 Wired story “Vanish,” about his attempt to disappear and the public’s effort to find him, was selected by the magazine as one of the twenty best stories in its history. He also cohosts the acclaimed Longform podcast and was a founding editor of Pop-Up Magazine, a live journalism event that tours the United States. He is the co-author of Safe- The Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World, about innovation and counterterrorism, and the editor of the collection Love and Ruin- Tales of Obsession, Danger, and Heartbreak.

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