In 1970 - 1972 I had the privilege of working with Victor Oboyski. Robert Sabbag's book captures the essence of that fine Military Policeman. The rest of the book provides an exciting look into the world of law enforcement and the US Marshal Service. The book is worth the price just to read of Vic's entry methods. PS Ask Vic about SMLM!

What a great account of the nations oldest law enforcement agency. The book is full of information about the Marshals service, it's mission, and it's history. You'll also get to know some interesting personalities in the Marshals service along the way. I am a Deputy Sheriff myself, as well as a history buff. From that Perspective, I throughly enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down. Mr. Sabbag, thanks for a great look into the world of the U.S. Marshals. And as for Deputy U.S. Marshal Victor Oboyski - I'd be happy to "do a door" with you anytime.

very well written, i just couln't put this book down, and you won't be able to either. Portrays the Marshal Service like no other author has. This book will give you a peek inside the oldest and most respectable Federal Law Enforcement agency. Highly Recommended!

After seeing the movie Blow and reading the related book, I enjoyed the subject so much I bought this book. I was disappointed. First, this is a very old book written in the 70's. Almost an amatuerish attempt. This book describes the drug smuggler, how he gets in the business, how he imports and makes his connections, and how he eventually is caught. Unfortunately, the author didn't know how to edit the book and instead starts on a story and then decides to give you an education on everything he has read about the subject. Then he goes back to the story. Therefore, I found this book to be verrrrry slow.

On the positive side, it's almost comical how this guy falls in the business and decides to go to Columbia to set up his product. Not really knowing anyone, he just meets street people and eventually runs into connections. The smuggler's real talent is concocting the scam on bringing the product in. Most of his shipments are not stopped, but even if they were, he develops stories so his mules can act like they had no knowledge and won't be charged. You should be aware, this is really not a big-time smuggler on the scale of the Blow character, but rather this smuggler brings in enough to last him a few months, then goes back for another trip.

If you're interested in drug smuggling, this book may fill in the holes. But from a pleasurable fascinating pleasurable read, there are better books like "Blow".

I heard that Robert Sabbag was a good writer so I decided to pick up Snowblind up and read it and I couldn't put it down. I thought that it gave a really close look into the drug trade and it was very detailed so you really got a feel for the life that was lead. I have started reading his books now and I can't stop. I have told many of my friends to read the book.

Snowblind begins with the Zackary Swan, the protaganist, telling his lawyer that even though cops found an ounce of coke, "they didn't find my stash." From this point on the book is a non-stop roller coaster ride into the life of Zack, the "every-man"cocaine smuggler/dealer. Sabbag's prose washes over the reader like a wave of intensity. Zackary's explosive story is the perfect mate to ride that wave into the reader's mind and psyche, making Snowblind linger in the one's memory long after he or she puts the book down. What I truly loved is the fact that Zack is not your stereotypical drug dealer- he is a smart, interesting character with a memory for details that will astound the reader. Sabbag successfully puts to rest the prejudice that all drug dealers are moronic scums. This should be a must read for both DEA agents and drug kingpins. Snowblind reads as a how-to book on drug smuggling. Zack's smuggling methods are as brilliant as they are simple. Sabbag's reverent wit in the telling of these methods makes this one of the best and most insightful books ever written on the narcotics trade. Snowblind is a brilliant book that I recommend for everyone.

Overall a very good read. A little slow and wordy out of the gate but once the action starts it goes through to the end. Reads like a blockbuster movie script. Found myself thinking about a career change midway through the book.

Following the modern day swashbuckler, Allen Long, on his adventurous trips in the smuggling business gives the reader a lesson in how North America's appetite for marijuana was fed for the decade after the 60's.

The author Sabbag concentrates on the fast-paced smuggling business, denying the reader insight into the characters risking life and limb to become the Kings of Pot. As a result, the whole book is a sustained flurry of activity. This isn't a bad thing, as the lack of character development creates the atmosphere I imagine the protagonist Long lived in - one of many contacts, and never being sure who they really are and who is going to play an important part later on in the story.

I walked away from this book with the distinct impression that smugglers, perhaps more than anything else, are adrenaline junkies. Stepping up drug interdiction efforts is to people like Long what one more school bus was to Evil Knievel; the bigger the risk, the bigger the rush.

I'm not giving anything away when I say the book ends with the quote "this would make a great movie." Perhaps that is why over half of Americans still support this War on Drugs - it's so entertaining.

Surely no review is going to do justice to this fairly insane, eminently thriulling book. Sabbag goes back to the halycon days of the early 70's, and recreates drug smuggling with the most erudite of novelistic verve! That's a feat- this is 30 years later we're covering, and to place us, the bored and incompetent reader, back in that perfervid time is a feat of highwire journalistic daring. Like "Blow," that good movie and even better book, this is a hale and debonair look at that most Aemrican of enterprises, the upright white guy's ascent into and then descent out of the murky, sinister, yet grievously partying world of international big-stakes durg smuggling. Sabbag is clear that Long is our protagonist, our stand-in for all the pusillanimous white boy dreamers who toked but never sold, and his style is pure Boy's Life, rippling adventure and shifting fortunes interspersed like a Hollywood thriller. Corporate America, that global behemoth, is a study in amoral, unethical gamesplaying, so spare the world any qualms about the ultimate worth of this bad boy's bucaneering. The drugs many imbibe in this country are a mark of our depravity, yet also a condemnation of our listless and purposeless social inertia. Sabbag's book will fail to register a single sine wave as social commentary, since it is too kinetic and jargon-free to qualify as stolid academic commentary, but this is our ultimate failing as a society. This book is directly connected to our vital communal adrenaline, and stands as a wholly pleasurable celebration of human initiative, and then earned senescence (Long is an unjailed, unmarked family man at the end, unlike the haunted hipster of "Blow"). Whatever your moral positioning, this is a male beach read for the ages.