Search results for ""Author Jesse Fink""

Part biography, part forensic jigsaw puzzle, part cold-case detective investigation, The Eagle in the Mirror is the story of Charles Howard 'Dick' Ellis. The longest-serving spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Ellis helped set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), now known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). In the 1940s he was considered one of the top three secret agents in MI6 and controlled its activities, as one journalist put it, 'for half the world'.But in the 1980s crusading espionage journalist Chapman Pincher (in the hugely successful books Their Trade is Treachery and Too Secret Too Long) and retired MI5 intelligence officer Peter Wright (in the worldwide bestseller Spycatcher) posthumously accused Ellis of having operated as a 'triple agent' for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1965, while under interrogation in London, Ellis had allegedly made a confession that he had supplied information to the Nazis before World War II. However, Pincher's and Wright's accusations against Ellis have never been comprehensively proven. No confession has materialised.Was Ellis guilty or was an innocent man framed? By confessing did he take the fall for someone else? Or had the intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia been fatally compromised by a 'super mole'? Internationally bestselling author JESSE FINK (Pure Narco, Bon: The Last Highway, The Youngs) attempts to find out the truth once and for all.The Eagle in the Mirror is not just a long-overdue biography of the unheralded Dick Ellis; it's a gripping real-life international whodunit.

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The death of Bon Scott is the Da Vinci Code of rock. As the legend of the man known around the world simply as 'Bon' has grown with each passing year since his untimely death, AC/DCs trailblazing frontman has become a rock icon. But how much of it is true and how much is myth? At the heart of Bon: The Last Highway: The Untold Story of Bon Scott and AC/DC's Back In Black is a special - and unlikely - friendship between a Scottish-born Australian rock star and an alcoholic Texan rebel. Jesse Fink, author of the critically acclaimed international bestseller The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC, reveals its importance in Bon's story for the first time. Leaving no stone unturned in a journey that begins in Austin in 1977 and ends in London in 1980, Fink takes the reader back to the end of the '70s, a legendary era for music that saw the relentless AC/DC machine achieve its commercial breakthrough but also threaten to come apart. With unprecedented access to Bon's lovers, newly unearthed documents, and a trove of never-before-seen photos, Fink divulges startling new information about Bon's incredible life and his final hours to solve the mystery of how he died. Music fans around the world have been waiting for the original, forensic, unflinching, masterful biography Bon Scott so richly deserves and now, finally, it's here. Praise for Bon: The Last Highway: 'The most extensively researched book on AC/DC ever ... it's outstanding. This is as close as anyone is ever gonna get to the complete truth behind the legend, warts and all.' - B. J. LISKO, Canton Repository 'This one-man investigation, born of respect for the truth and for Bon Scott as a human being, blazes a new trail.' - JOE BONOMO, author of AC/DC's Highway To Hell (33 1/3 Series) 'Jesse Fink has done rock fans a great service. He dispels the many myths about how AC/DC's Bon Scott lived and died, and in doing so, brings to life one of the most influential, memorable and complex figures in rock history.' - GREG RENOFF, author of Van Halen Rising

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"A largely untold, much more controversial story… anything but a hagiography. A fresh, incisive take on the band." - MOJO **** "Fink's ability to overcome the Youngs’ code of Scottish-Australian omert? is impressive… a cut above other AC/DC tomes, and Fink knows it." - Classic Rock **** 1Z2 With sales of over 200 million albums, AC/DC is not just the biggest rock band in the world, it's a family business built by three brothers: George, Malcolm and Angus Young. As with any business, some people prospered, while others got hurt along the way. The Youngs: The Brothers Who Build AC/DC is unlike any AC/DC book you've read before. Less a biography, more a critical appreciation, it tells the story of the trio through 11 classic songs and reveals some of the personal and creative secrets that went into their making. Important figures from AC/DC's long journey to the top open up for the very first time, while unsung heroes behind the band's success are given the credit they are due. Accepted accounts of events are challenged while sensational new details emerge to cast a whole new light on the band's history - especially their early years with Atlantic Records in the United States. Former AC/DC members and musicians from bands such as Guns N' Roses, Dropkick Murphys, Airbourne and Rose Tattoo also give their perspectives on the Youngs' brand of magic.

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When it was first published in 2017, Jesse Fink’s masterful biography of Bon Scott became an international sensation: it made the cover of Classic Rock magazine, threats were made against the author, and there was talk among some AC/DC fans of boycotts and book burnings. So why the uproar? The legend of the man known around the world as `Bon’ grows with each passing year. In death, AC/DC’s trailblazing frontman has become a rock icon. But so much of his story is myth. Bon: The Last Highway tells the unvarnished truth. The 1977–80 period forged the legend of AC/DC. There wasn’t a harder working band on the road in America. But, as Fink reveals in a journey that takes the reader from Austin to Miami to London, the relentless AC/DC machine was threatening to fall apart. With unprecedented access to Bon’s lovers, newly unearthed documents and a trove of never-before-seen photos, this updated edition contains a new introduction and more revelations about the singer’s death, which should dispel once and for all the idea that Scott succumbed to acute alcohol poisoning on 19 February 1980. Meticulously researched and packed with fresh information, Bon: The Last Highway is an affectionate, honest tribute to a titan of rock music.

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'I was a drug trafficker in the true sense of the word: a pure narco.'For 25 years Luis Antonio Navia the Cuban-American smuggled hundreds of tons of white powder for the biggest cartels in Colombia and Mexico, including Pablo Escobar's Medellín Cartel.What made him good at his dangerous job was amassing trusted contacts, losing very few shipments of coke, and maintaining a low profile. He refused to carry a weapon. But he was never far removed from the most brutal violence imaginable. One friend got his head cut off. Another was hit over the head, stuffed in a 55-gallon drum full of cement and dumped in a canal. Navia himself was kidnapped three times and went close to being fed alive to crocodiles. Somehow through it all he managed to survive and spent two decades fooling law-enforcement agencies until he came under the radar of Robert Harley, a tenacious US Customs special agent in Key West, Florida, who was determined to bring him to justice.What followed was an international game of cat-and-mouse that culminated in Navia's 2000 capture in Venezuela in one of the biggest antinarcotics takedowns of all time, the 12-nation Operation Journey.Spanning decades, continents and featuring a who's who of the drug trade, Pure Narco is a fast-paced adventure ride into the dark underworld of cocaine trafficking, written with the cooperation of a dozen law-enforcement agents from the world's top antinarcotics forces in the United States and Great Britain. Navia served his time in jail and is now free to tell his tale. His is the rare perspective of someone who has worked on both sides of that war: as a cocaine trafficker and US Government consultant. This book is a redemption story. Luis Navia, the pure narco, has gone full circle.

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For a quarter century, Luis Antonio Navia worked as a high-level cocaine transporter for all of the major Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, including Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel, and flooded the United States and Europe with cocaine before his dramatic arrest in Venezuela in 2000 during the 12-nation Operation Journey.The story of Navia’s rise, fall, takedown, imprisonment, and redemption is expertly researched and told by acclaimed biographer Jesse Fink, who has gathered interviews with Navia, Navia’s family, and a dozen law-enforcement agents in the United States and Great Britain from agencies such as the DEA, ICE and Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise (now Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs). Told in vivid detail, this true crime story will captivate the reader from start to finish.

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