Gripping and funny...[Otis] tells an amazing story in his first book....Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell were finally freed during the summer of 2008, and Otis tells their story in the sort of rich detail you’d expect of an experienced print journalist.
With its Conradian atmosphere of jungle-induced madness and an immediacy stemming from interviews with many of the participants, this will engage all...
Law of the Jungle is a well-reported, highly informative account of the chase, which was undertaken largely by the Colombian army....[A] thriller-opera of a story....Otis’s story rises beyond ordinary reporting: He manages to condense recent Colombian history into a clear, digestible narrative.
With its Conradian atmosphere of jungle-induced madness and an immediacy stemming from interviews with many of the participants, this will engage all...
Compelling...Wild.
…Law of the Jungle is a well-reported, highly informative account of the chase, which was undertaken largely by the Colombian army…The story…is reminiscent of nothing so much as José Eustacio Rivera's jungle novel The Vortex or even Mario Vargas Llosa's The Green House. It is phantasmagorical in the extreme…
—The Washington Post
Amazing...Mesmerizing....[John] Otis has assembled a yarn that would make a magical realist blush, complete with outlandish characters, tragicomic twists of fate, and far-flung deeds of derring-do.... Riveting.” — Boston Globe
“Compelling...Wild.” — New York Post
“Law of the Jungle is a well-reported, highly informative account of the chase, which was undertaken largely by the Colombian army....[A] thriller-opera of a story....Otis’s story rises beyond ordinary reporting: He manages to condense recent Colombian history into a clear, digestible narrative.” — Washington Post
“Gripping and funny...[Otis] tells an amazing story in his first book....Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell were finally freed during the summer of 2008, and Otis tells their story in the sort of rich detail you’d expect of an experienced print journalist.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“With its Conradian atmosphere of jungle-induced madness and an immediacy stemming from interviews with many of the participants, this will engage all...” — Booklist
“An impossible-to-put-down read with as many twists and turns as a summer blockbuster.... Otis, a journalist who has worked in Latin America for more than 20 years, skillfully weaves this incredible tale of attempted—and eventually successful—rescue by Colombian soldiers....Fascinating.” — Very Short List
“Has the feel of a John Huston movie, with its mix of tragedy, intrigue, black comedy and, ultimately, heroism....fascinating. — BookPage
An impossible-to-put-down read with as many twists and turns as a summer blockbuster.... Otis, a journalist who has worked in Latin America for more than 20 years, skillfully weaves this incredible tale of attempted—and eventually successful—rescue by Colombian soldiers....Fascinating.
Compelling...Wild.
Amazing...Mesmerizing....[John] Otis has assembled a yarn that would make a magical realist blush, complete with outlandish characters, tragicomic twists of fate, and far-flung deeds of derring-do.... Riveting.
Law of the Jungle is a well-reported, highly informative account of the chase, which was undertaken largely by the Colombian army....[A] thriller-opera of a story....Otis’s story rises beyond ordinary reporting: He manages to condense recent Colombian history into a clear, digestible narrative.
Written as a spine-tingling, true-life adventure story, this is the tale of three American contractors taken hostage in 2003 when their plane went down while they were taking surveillance photos of cocaine laboratories as part of a counternarcotics mission for the Pentagon in Colombia. They were fortunate to survive the plane crash, but their luck turned when Marxist guerrillas found and captured them within hours, ultimately holding them hostage in the Colombian jungle for five unbearably long years. These same guerrillas were dumbfounded when they stumbled upon a hidden stash of $20 million; their days morphed into a mad frenzy involving a bacchanalian atmosphere filled with alcohol and prostitutes. This well-documented tale ends in 2008 with the incredibly risky rescue of the hostages, a scenario that could easily have gone awry. VERDICT A fast-paced, high-octane read by a seasoned reporter (Otis is a contributor to Time) who knows the ins and outs of Colombia, its war lords, and the drug cartel, this will appeal most to those who love real-life adventure stories, as well as those interested in current events and America's war on drugs.—Krista Bush, Sch. Lib. Media Specialist, West Haven Public Schools, CT
