I missed the download window on this title, but it's a topic of great interest to me. I look forward to checking this title our from the library or purchasing a copy in the near future.

I appreciate the generosity of authors and publishers in making titles available for readers to review in advance of publication.

Great listen. The journalistic style to this nonfiction work makes it an enjoyable listen and is perfect for any crime enthusiasts. Definitely will be recommending this book.

This is a solid book (and solid audiobook narration) about El Chapo. I picked it up because I only had a cursory, headline news level of knowledge about it, and was intrigued. Since I didn't have a lot of previous experience (and it probably didn't help I listened to it over a long course of time), it was hard at times to remember and differentiate the different names of the agents working to track Guzman down, as well as his collaborators. I feel like this would work really well as a documentary, and I especially enjoyed the investigation elements that describe how he was tracked. If you're interested in the cartel or in federal investigations, you'll probably like this.

While interesting, I thought that this book jumped around too much - between different people on the law enforcement side, to the point where it was hard to follow who was who; between different locations in Mexico, without a lot of setting-building; between different girlfriends and wives and associates of Guzman, without a lot of character explanation so everyone was just names and surface details. I guess, ultimately, this book was more "telling" than "showing," which didn't make for an engrossing story.

I had a hard time with this one since it was more military and history than true crime (Which I always enjoy). I found myself drifting off in thoughts but that’s a “me issue” not the author since I don’t like true history so much.

El Jefe by Alan Feuer was a very interesting audiobook. It was a very well researched and detailed account of El Chapo and his drug trade. I enjoyed the inclusion of the technological piece of the criminals and how that was used to ultimately track leaders of the drug trade.

I'm DNFing this at 13%. I've listened to some good audiobooks about this subject, and this one is just boring me. The narrator kills it.

I received this audiobook from the publisher through NetGalley

The narration was very well done. Mr. Pabon has a very pleasant voice and did a great job of adding life to what could have been a very dry read.

The book itself was very informative and, while a little boring for someone not into this kind of thing, was actually pretty interesting. I feel like I can maybe keep up next time my husband decides to watch Narcos.

As a fan of the "Narcos" tv series and Don Winslow novels, I heard a lot about Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, but this audiobook gave me a whole new perspective and a lot of new, fascinating facts. I had no idea how deeply the US agents managed to penetrate Sinaloa’s cartel communication networks - hearing the content of messages exchanged between the mobster and his family was somewhat uncanny. In addition to much fresh material, Alan Feuer also provides a neat summary of the story of Guzman and the whole narco business in Mexico.

The book is full of details and names, so in the audio version you need to be really focused, but it's worth it.

Thanks to the publisher, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.

I'll be honest, this book was not very entertaining to me. I chose it because it's half-inside my comfort zone (true crime, "riveting" nonfiction retellings) and half-outside my comfort zone (espionage/military history or thrillers). My experience ended up being more on the "outside my comfort zone" side of the spectrum.

I'm not very familiar with Chapo Guzmán and his work, nor am I familiar with the U.S.'s various missions to "stalk" and capture him. Maybe if I were already more knowledgeable about this topic, the little details - the insider information provided by key interviews with agents, witnesses, etc. - would have been more impressive to me. There's no doubt that this book contains a vast amount of detail, more than has ever been publicly released before. For fans of the story, this is a gold mine. But having never read about El Chapo before, much of this seemed humdrum.

A lot of the story is about the process of the Mexican and U.S. governments intercepting communications within Chapo's network - getting the Blackberry Messenger PINs, getting data from a cellphone software called FlexiSpy, etc. Although I get how huge this is for collecting incriminating information and location data on the kingpin and his staff, it's not very interesting to read about. Again, for those who know a lot about military intelligence and espionage, this is probably fascinating - but I found it a bit dry. Even the more salacious parts of the story - Chapo's escape from Mexico's highest-security prison - were not told in as riveting a way as Narcos tells it. The audiobook was well-narrated, but it just didn't capture my attention as I was hoping it would.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the ARC!

3.5/5 I came into this with very little knowledge of El Chapo (though I do strangely remember the whole Sean Penn thing), so while this book was well-written and extremely interesting, part of me needed a little more background info. This book focused on more recent years, with most of it being about tracking his cell phones, but doesn't leave you really understanding much about who El Chapo really was and what made him into such an influential drug kingpin. All in all, I think this would be a good companion to books that discuss earlier parts of his life as well as his personal relationships, but readers should go into it knowing that it really is quite specific to tracking and monitoring his various technological ways of communicating.

I strayed from my normal book and picked this up. I picked it for two reasons, it was available and my husband had watched something about El Jefe on tv that intrigued me.
This book chronicles the FBI tracking and arresting the drug kingpin.

Opinion
I listened to the audio. The narrator was excellent, adding inflections that I’m not sure I would have picked up on had I read the written word.
The story itself is intriguing. The fact that El Jefe’s use of technology ultimately led to his downfall captivated me. It was a great book.

This story was fascinating and well written on several levels. First it was a detailed blow by blow of the way a modern international criminal justice investigation involving technological surveillance and a ton of attempts to turn close associates, complete with military raids and unlikely escapes. Second it was a meditation on the meaning of a drug kingpin in Mexico, how the lack of trust engendered from an incredibly corrupt government can allow space for a murderer and mobster to take the moral high ground. At several points, Feuer explores the possibility/conspiracy theory that Chapo Guzman wasn't even the head of a crime syndicate and was only a flashy figurehead designed to be a robin hood figure. Finally, and most distressingly, it's a meditation on the brokenness of the drug war. A ton of effort was spent to being down one famous kingpin, but nothing changed. The syndicates still exist and the drugs still flow, to the detriment of all countries involved.

I would say this is a fascinating account, but it doesn't seem right for something so morbid, tragic, and infuriating. So, I will say it's informative and detailed, and well researched. It was hard to listen to how people were and are terribly victimized by drug criminals like El Chapo. The narration was good, but a bit fast paced at times, so it could be hard to follow if I was multitasking, which I tend to do with audiobooks.

I received an audioARC in exchange for an honest review.