Synopsis
The rise and fall of an unlikely international crime boss--Sister Ping--and the intricate human trafficking network she created from her business in New York City's Chinatown, together with a panoramic tale about the gangland gunslingers who worked for her, the immigration and law enforcement officials who pursued her, and the generation of penniless immigrants who risked death to realize their own version of the American dream.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2009-07-21 |
| Size | | Length: | 414 pages | | Height: | 9.5 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.8 in | | Weight: | 25.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
Traces the story of illegal Chinese immigrant Cheng Chui Ping, who built a multimillion-dollar human-smuggling conglomerate with direct links to a violent Chinatown gang, an organization that was exposed by New York's fabled "Jade Squad" and the FBI twelve years before Ping's conviction.
Industry Reviews
"Keefe's account maintains the swift pace of a thriller. With the immigration debate still boiling, this exploration of how far people will go to achieve the American dream is a must-read." (starred review)
(05/11/2009)
"[THE SNAKEHEAD is] a rich, beautifully told story, so suspenseful and with so many unexpected twists that in places it reads like a John le Carré novel....This is one of the freshest accounts of modern-day migration I've read, one filled with moral ambiguity, one that doesn't pretend to have the answers, one that in these times feels like essential reading."
(08/02/2009)
"[I]f one wants a true-crime book of a very high order, Keefe delivers the goods....THE SNAKEHEAD...is a brilliantly constructed police procedural-c**-courtroom drama....Keefe writes gracefully, perceptively, insightfully about a vast array of characters..."
(08/16/2009)
"[A] formidably well-researched book that is as much a paean to its author's industriousness as it is a chronicle of crime...Mr. Keefe has the wisdom to realize that Sister Ping, for all her flouting of American law enforcement, is not a sufficiently vivid or galvanizing figure on whom to center a book. So she becomes one of many, to the point that THE SNAKEHEAD struggles to balance the many twisting story lines that fill its pages."
(08/16/2009)
"[R]iveting....Keefe illustrates the impressive intricacy of Sister Ping's criminal network while simultaneously chronicling the beastly indignities to which her customers were subjected on their hellish voyages to America....THE SNAKEHEAD is a gangland saga, but Keefe...deftly interweaves the political, legal and gunslinging strands of Sister Ping's story..."
(08/21/2009)
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