Ghosts of Panama gives us an in depth look at the relationship between the United States and Panama when General Manuel Noriega ruled the country as a dictator. There is a lot of textbook information in the first half of the book. Then the action ratchets up and it becomes more of a suspense thriller. This is a good book for anyone interested in the history of Panama in the late 1980’s.

Turns out you shouldn't trust drug dealers. Authors Leon Carroll and Mark Harmon tell the story of how the U.S. broke up with General Manual Noriega and set Panama free. The story follows various characters but mainly focuses on NIS (no, not NCIS, they didn't get named that yet) Special Agent Rick Yell. Yell and his wife Annya serve as the focal point, but there are a lot of other people mentioned including CIA agents.

Carroll is a former NCIS agent and, of course, Harmon is the former lead of the very popular NCIS TV show. This book unfolds very much like their first book, Ghosts of Honolulu, which was centered on the attack on Pearl Harbor. Both books are written for general audiences. They are short, to the point, and don't linger too long on any one person or event.

The writing style depends on your personal preference. For something like Panama, I would have preferred a bit more background since I am not well versed on Operation Just Cause. If you are looking for something you can knock out in a few hours with little fuss, then this is right up your alley. I should mention for the history nerds, there are sections where the authors mention they "recreated" some dialogue. This is not something I am a fan of and have railed against it in the past. However, it happens very little and the conversations are not entirely made up but pulled from documents which were not written as conversations. The rest of the book is well sourced. I would tell readers that this book would work well for most audiences, but for history nerds you may need another book after this to fill in some gaps.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Harper Select.)

This is very well sourced and fills a baffling hole in the nonfiction section - it's very strange that there aren't more books on Panamanian history besides the canal. It does seem to assume quite a bit of background knowledge about the time and place that I think are a mistake to assume - it would be a stronger book if it were more accessible. I'm in my mid 40's and only vaguely remember anything about Noreiga; younger people won't come at this with any knowledge at all, and it's not like anybody gets this far into the twentieth century in history survey courses.