Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire

by Kevin Deutsch

April 28, 2015, West Baltimore, Maryland: Ground Zero in America's Opiate Wars.

In this crime-plagued section of the city, the death of Freddie Gray has triggered the worst domestic rioting since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and created a terrifying new breed of criminal entrepreneur.

Here, as looters and arsonists lay waste to already blighted parts of Baltimore, two of the city's brightest students are helping to carry out a historic drug robbery spree--one that will flood the city with highly addictive pain pills and heroin.
The teens' plan: to use their gang connections and computer programming skills to set up a high tech drug delivery service and Dark Web marketplace. The result: the boys became America's youngest drug lords, in the process sparking bloody gang warfare and a nationwide wave of addiction and murder. Now mixing in deadly circles, Brick and Wax soon found their own lives were on the line...

In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, Newsday criminal justice reporter Kevin Deutsch chronicles the rise of these gangland upstarts as they help steal $100 million worth of high-powered opiates, and build a national narcotics empire from scratch.

As gripping and compulsive as a thriller, Pill City takes readers into the heat of the action as Brick and Wax outwit the FBI and DEA, gang members like Damage and Lyric live and die by their own brutal code, the cops battle to stop the carnage, and a high-school coach risks a bullet to get addicts into rehab.

A gritty, hard-hitting story of gangland survival, Pill City will open the world's eyes to the plague of drug-related killings rocking America, and reveal the deadly cost of the Baltimore riots.

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime, Crime, Drugs, Audiobook, History, Adult

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 2017

About the author

Kevin Deutsch is an award-winning journalist, host of the literary true crime podcast “A Dark Turn” on Authors on the Air Global Radio, and author of two books: “The Triangle: A Year on the Ground with New York’s Bloods and Crips,” and “Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire.” He is the general assignment and Jewish communities reporter for Talk Media, an award-winning chain of local news sites covering Broward County, Fl. Previously, he was the senior staff writer at The Miami Times in Miami, Fl., a staff writer at New Mexico's Rio Grande SUN and, before that, worked as the crime reporter for the Talk Media chain, including Coral Springs Talk. He has also worked as a staff writer at the New York Daily News, Newsday, The Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, The Riverdale Press, and Bronx Justice News. Read his work at www.kevindeutsch.us.

Reviews

[Jeanette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having three books to review today, this one is definitely the hardest. It's not fun to read, and it's not easy to read. Some of the language is grotesque and also I'm sure has connotations I most probably don't begin to comprehend. It's non-fiction in the base reality of a series such as "The Wire". If you can /could follow and tolerate the visions in that particular work, then you may be able to read this for its length.

The author's style to give you some of the aspects for the riots and after riots periods in Baltimore during the late Spring of 2015 (and afterwards), quite apart from the two students' stories! Some have described it as over the top or exaggerated. It's not, in fact if anything he attempts to stifle, IMHO. The photos are accurate and more censored than most of you would believe, just my opinion. They are more "after" than "during"- the ones he has chosen. This is real. At the end of the book he has 5 plus pages of source references in tiny print. The book holds many, many stats. And you will be told and it will be repeated where the sources were and are.

But it is much more the story of two young, young men who established their domain of empire and the BGF (Black Guerilla Family gang). Before you start, the Glossary List and the Key Players List is essential. I needed to flip back to the beginning for these several times. The language is dense and its another dialect for connotation and context in some of the most succinct conversational quips, at that.

It's the story of "Wax" and "Brick" setting up their Dark Web market, but it is also fine followings to cases for several of their takers. And there are some stories, like the coach's, that are 6 star, if that could be a rating.

The opiate and fentanyl levels of use and demise are now, in these last 2 years, actually changing the entire longevity scale in the USA for both males and females.

Read this book. Don't remain ignorant to the most dangerous (more than North Korea, Iran or for most of you Donald Trump) and deadly route to current death in the USA that is by 100's per month per location state under reported or put into another accidental death category. And who makes the money? And who kills the most black American citizens of every age group in vast number? Far, far beyond any other situational or disease related stat for not just homicide deaths but all deaths.

Government is THERE has existence at all, primarily, so that it can stop this proliferate horror and depth in criminal numbers. Gangs kill, maim, destroy. Every single day. And they pick and choose too- not as reported by "crossfire accident". Gunfire accident! Thinking gun registration and limiting decrees make it less likely. Please! Picking a 10 year old niece or a 18 year old sister is prime common and the people who are most devastated by the losses most often KNOW who did it too. And most know why, as well. This all could be stopped. And the support systems that enable urban gangs to destroy and negate vast urban areas for generation after generation could be altered in a way that doesn't allow them fortress.

This is Baltimore's story. Chicago's is worse. St. Louis is no piker either.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?...

Use your cursor- those are only the primary 154 gangs here. In the area I was born, it would be difficult for me to walk now. When trying to visit in the past, assault was nearly instant.

Kudos to Kevin Deutsch. How did he do this and still remain standing? By choosing who he did choose to highlight and when. What goes up fast, comes down fast. But what most surprised me is how he got some old "heads" to dish.

[Alison]

I live in Baltimore, where there is a cloud of suspicion over this book (Baltimore Sun, Fenton, Simon a, b, c). I have skimmed the first chapter online, and that's likely it for me. It does not read as true. If you read it, do so with a huge grain of salt.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first time I've ever listened to an entire audiobook in a day. It was that good.

[Zak · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title and description caught my attention. Turned out to be a decent story. I say "story" because, despite the writer's insistence on the veracity of his reporting and research, I was simply unable to find any actual articles or interviews in the news, print or digital media to corroborate the events narrated in the book.

All names of people in the book were changed, supposedly to protect them from retribution by violent criminal gangs. How convenient, though I fail to see why this is necessary even for those who openly carry out intervention work in defiance of such gangs and have already been targeted by them. But it sure makes it hard to contact them for corroboration.

[Susan Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks for the Goodreads giveaway courtesy of St. Martin's Press Nonfiction. What a fabulous read from start to finish. A well organized account of one of the horrors and the continued devastating impact begun during the 2015 rioting in Baltimore after Freddie Grey's death. Author Kevin Deutsch puts his journalistic expertise to use to chronicle the application of technological savvy to change the face of the illegal drug business in Baltimore and beyond that arose from the kernal of an idea hatched by two unlikely high school aged boys with skill and hunger to change the situation they were born into. Using skills and moxie, they together wreaked havoc, with continued cascading implications across the U.S., especially in the poor, black societies they were trying to climb out of. Written with heart and an ear for detail, Kevin successfully takes you into the time, cities and people to feel the opportunity of some contrasted with the hopelessness of many resulting from these two honors students 'seizing of the day'.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

If this was a fictional work, I'd give it 5 stars - it was incredibly gripping and I finished it in a day. I have some reservations, though, since it's portrayed as journalistic non-fiction, but has come under fire for being inaccurate at best, and blatantly made-up at worst. Some interesting coverage of the controversy here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/mary...

[Katie Acosta · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of controversy about this book and the authors honestly and objectivity when telling the story. Overall I enjoyed the book, which was pretty disturbing for me because it is not a good story at all. I did listen to it and I missed having the information lists to flip back and remember who was who but I managed not to get too confused.
I think perhaps the author took some poetic license with the details but i don’t doubt the story itself.

[Meg Coulson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but who knows if it’s actually true?

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! Reading how two honor roll students created a drug empire they way they day, amazing. It's a shame they couldn't use their talent for a positive outcome though.

[Lilatovinl · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone as non-fiction. It's a great fiction story but the facts seem made up. The author claims he conducted over 300 hours of interviews yet the book was written in less than a year from the start of the riots after Freddy Grey's death to the publishing date. If the author only met "Brick" and "Wax"on a few occasions how is he able to describe in detail their clothes while hacking and the music they were listening to every time he writes about them? Although chock-full of extraneous details most all of them feel fictional. There are quite a few reports from reliable sources discrediting almost everything this author claims in the book. Reader beware!

[Chris]

I knew about Pill City from all the news articles that were written about it and from the world of hackers and programmers. The idea that two honor-roll students could overtake an industry that has been run the same way for so long is one for the textbooks.

I read some of the reviews of what other people had to say about this book with one review standing out the most to me; Baltimore is nothing like what this book portrays and is not that dangerous and to take everything that is written with a grain of salt. I looked at that review and said the same about the city I'm currently in; from the outside everything looks like a city that is full of well intention good honest people walking about doing their own thing. The only difference about that is, at least a group of these people all have some form of a drug habit on them. How do I know? A simple surf on craigslist and backpage all show the number of people looking for a "connect." Now you might be quick to say, yea but that is just a small number of people posting for that. So take it a little further, dive into the personal ads and you begin to notice something else as if its an honor badge of sorts, you begin to see more and more people adding to their posts, "420 friendly." Drugs have become a common place for people to think nothing wrong of them, yet, as this book states, over hundred people die every day from overdoses. I would say that is a pretty damning statistic and one that makes drugs a very bad thing.

I was turned on to this story after reading about more and more teen coders getting into trouble with the law because of the programs they were writing. One such story I read was about a kid in the UK who got into trouble because he wrote a program to show how vulnerable network printers are around the world. After gaining worldwide attention a few people from the tech world decided to interview him. The only part that struck me from his interview was the part where they asked, "if he had the outlets to satisfy his skills and curiosity," would he have done what he did and the student responded by saying no, he would have been doing something worth his time that the school could have provided him with. The only problem is that he also mentions that there are no resources to help him grow his programming skills at his age in productive ways and that is where Pill City comes in.

Brick and Wax struck me as both kids who had amazing programming skills and had straight As but what about computer science courses? Well, lets break it down shall we? If you want a top of the line CS program in middle and high school, you have to live in a high-income all white school district. Of all the low-income schools that feed from minority populations I have never seen a CS dept in any of those schools that provided a curriculum that churned out top notch coders, infact, chances are most of those schools don't even have computer science to begin with so if you have rogue programmers with top notch skills like Brick and Wax running around, their skills are transformed into weapons based on their environment. They had no one in their lives to first off, notice their skills, and second off, offer to help cultivate their skills into doing something better with them.

Instead Brick and Wax, without the proper support from responsible adults that were missing in their lives, used their skills for evil and in the process turned millions of people across the US, and eventually others in foreign countries, into drug addicts. Their programming skills set up a wave of new forms of drug dealings with new drug organizations popping up afterwards using the same methods that Brick and Wax created. In essence Brick and Wax are responsible for creating a program that enabled millions of more people to become addicts and eventually die from their daily habits.

If you are an economics person or you studied Public Health policy in college, then you know that these two kids alone, because of the failure of their teachers to notice their talents, are responsible for the economic plight of bringing down GDP in the US. When you have less people able to work and take care of themselves anymore, then social services takes a huge hit because now there are more people unable to take care of themselves so less people are working so that means less taxes being paid and less money for governments to fund programs. Now you should also know that stuff if you went to college and had a love for studying and reading because the details I provided are only a glimpse of the bigger picture.

Pill City taught me that our education is not equipped to find talents like Brick and Wax, and why would they? Students who are black and come from low-income neighborhoods are less likely to have any help provided to them from people with the means to do so. After reading this I knew I had to create a program that actively recruits prodigy teen programmers and provide them a space where they are encouraged to build their skills in healthy ways that rewards them for doing good with their skills. Now there are people reading just that last sentence thinking, "sure, but there will always be blackhat hackers and you can only do so much, so why waste your time?" Why? because more and more young programmers are only seeing the bad side to hacking and the large amounts of money that they are being offered by crime syndicates. There are not many whitehat hackers that are paid on the same scale as blackhat hackers making it a better deal to go with the dark side then the good. That needs to change.

I commend the author for writing this book because I use it for when I give talks about why more schools and adults need to actively look for talented kids with amazing computer and programming skills because that is truly where the future industries will come from. Those students need to be rewarded for finding bugs in school networks, not suspended and sent home. Programming students need to be challenged, not wasting their time worrying about passing exams. Brick and Wax never took the CS AP exam in high school and why would they? They already knew several languages and built their own nationwide secure network of communication whereas the typical Computer Science AP exam only tests students on their ability to code in Java and understand loops.

If you are interested in learning the world that Brick and Wax came from, sit down and read this book with great care. If you come from areas where drugs are everywhere, chances are Brick and Wax are responsible in some way for making it easier to get drugs to people where you live. If you are a computer science teacher and want to figure out how to do more then read this book because it will give you ideas about how computer science programs can make a change in students lives with a gift for coding.

This may seem like a small book to read but it is packed with so much information that you have to realize when you get to the end just exactly the impact Brick and Wax had with just knowing how to code.

[Steve Nolan · Rating 1 out of 5]

EDIT 4: " In another part of the book, one character reveals that he has lied to his brother for decades about their father’s dying wish for him, completely skewing his brother’s life towards crime. But he’s willing to finally reveal this secret to Deutsch."

I remember thinking - shit, that brother's going to be PISSED when he reads this book! Buuuuut none of those people exist, so. Yay. https://medium.com/@willsommer/does-t...
____________________________________________________________
EDIT 3: Fucking "Amazing Grace," the wine-swilling Mexican druglords, "you be trippin'," a detective courting a robbed pharmacy owner's daughter that then ODs, it's laughable in retrospect.
____________________________________________________________
EDIT 2: I'm fucking furious. As I was reading, I kept thinking two things - how is this not an award-winning book!? This shit is insane. And damn, Baltimore is *actually* a fucking war zone? How is that not more highly publicized, too? But it is. By liars with a racist fucking agenda to sell you.

The more I read the more damning it seemed for Deutsch, but this is what clinched it. After a hospital he reports visiting in the book can't verify that was ever there, he responded to questions about it by saying "I won't relate any information on this topic that isn't in the book, in order to protect the privacy of medical professionals, patients, and others I spoke with." I get having to do shit to protect sources - another constant thought I kept having, how are these people not doxxed and fucked now? - but you could say *when* you went to the dang hospital.

He's full of shit. Fuck him and fuck this book.
____________________________________________________________

EDIT: Oh, goddammit. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/f...

I knew the author's notes were too weird! Leaving my original review below.
____________________________________________________________

This whole book seems too unbelievable to be true. Tragic at many points, inspiring at others.

Hell, I sometimes found myself rooting *for* the drug dealers, which I don't think is ideal. It took the gruesome murders they committed to bring me back.

[Christina Everhart · Rating 2 out of 5]

According to City Paper (and the NYT), they were unable to verify the veracity of this story. Additionally, this did not read as objective reporting with the author's constant glorification of the criminal characters. I got the impression that this author has an affinity for mob/mafia/crime literature and this was an extension of that interest. As a resident of Baltimore who sees the fallout of gang culture daily on the news, I did not find his glorification of criminals relatable or respectable.

[Mia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Edited to add: Now I hear it's too good to be true--the author invented sources and plot points, according to Baltimore PD and others in the know. I hope that's not true, but ... who knows?

I came across this book randomly at the library and I am glad I did. The author's first-person access to people at every level of the drug trade and his to-the-point journalistic style make this a page turner-- in addition to a great intro to the relationships between poverty, addiction, race and crime in urban America.

Part of my job involves trying to get opioid abusers who want to detox into the hospital, and as I'm interviewing folks I often want to ask them "Why on earth did you even try heroin/oxycontin in the first place?!" Sometimes, even without my asking, they tell the story. More often, they are so dope sick when they are in front of me that they aren't in the mood for history.

Without a doubt, the scariest parts of Deutsch's book were not the scores of gangland murders permeating the neighborhoods he describes. The most terrifying parts were the descriptions of addicts' first times trying opioids, and their thinking processes at the time. In so many cases, it boiled down to "it was cheap" or "everybody was talking about it". And there goes a school teacher, a nurse, a city office worker. Right down the drain, and taking their children with them. Purdue Pharmaceutical for the win.

[Savannah Thorpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I blew through this book in about 24 hours, and I can say with great confidence that no book made me feel as equally hopeful and disheartened as this book did. I gasped audibly every other page. Kevin Deutsch wrote a fantastic piece of nonfiction that I truly wish were fiction. The brilliance blighted by death, the generation who's lost parents and caretakers to drugs, the community builders who risked everything to piece their neighborhoods back together...it's all heartbreaking. This book at once shifted my entire paradigm surrounding the Baltimore riots and the people who participated in it, suffered from it, and to this day are reeling for it. I want everyone to to read this book and meditate on what growing up in war-torn Baltimore is like and just how complex these issues are to solve.

[Mariah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this fascinating jaw-dropping account of the rise of a brutal opioid empire built in large part with prescription drugs looted during the Freddy Gray riots in Baltimore. It read like watching Season 1 of The Wire, only even more unbelievable and t.v. ready in some ways. So it shouldn't have been a huge shock to discover that the credibility of Deutsch's account has come under fire since the book's publication. Credibility questions aside, it's a good read that is worth checking out if you're interested in the devastating toll the opioid epidemic is having in inner cities in particular.

[Aaron Ash · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a look into a world I have little in common with, I found this book extremely interesting and sad.

But I kept thinking, "If this is all true, how did I not hear any of it." Well it may night be non-fiction as several reviewers have pointed out.

[L. Bell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, not sure about being true.

It's a good read but I'm not sure if it's true as advertised. It reads more like a season of The Wire more than a journalistic exposé.

[Samuel Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the main reasons that I prefer to read fiction over non-fiction is that one can be neat, the other cannot. The problem with real life is that things are not always wrapped up at the end, instead the years continue and more books need to be written. The drug scene in Baltimore is a good example, the fictionalised TV Show ‘‘The Wire’’ depicted a realistic view of a region in the grip of a crisis. Even this show ended openly with a rather depressing note that things are no better. If you want to find out how bad things have got, then look no further than ‘’Pill City’’ by Kevin Deutsch.

Technology has brought with it great opportunities; a world of knowledge at our fingertips. However, it has also led to a world of drugs at our fingertips too. ‘‘Pill City’’ tells the story of two young men who realise the potential of using encrypted phones to sell drugs and set up a market on the Dark Web. Coupled to this is a riot in Baltimore than gives them the opportunity to ransack tens of pharmacies for quality opiates. Their technological brains, coupled with an influx of powerful and cheap drugs, led to another deadly period on the streets of this city and the US as a whole.

If the purpose of art is to make you feel, ‘‘Pill City’’, as a book, works. If its aim is to entertain, perhaps it fails because this is not a fun book. The overpowering emotions that you will have when reading this book are depression, sadness and anger. Deutsch not only details the particular rise and fall of the two young dealer, Brick and Wax, but also explores the failure of America to help the poor Black neighbourhoods in the grip of a drug epidemic.

The format splits itself between Brick and Wax and the bigger picture. Having a narrative thread to focus the reader is important as otherwise the book is a data overload. There is a lot of information here about the number of deaths etc. At times Deutsch tries to personalise these by introducing us to a person that later dies. This helps to give the book impact, but does mean that it can be a little depressing. Having read a few True Crime books about crime in modern America, it seems to me that Deutsch has struck a good balance between dramatisation and truth. He does imbue those that he meets with thoughts and feelings that perhaps he cannot truly know, but it is never overplayed and you do not feel like you are being lied too.

Being lied to is an interesting concept in of itself as the book ‘‘Pill City’’ has come under some of its own investigation with some claiming that the author has created sources; an allegation that Deutsch robustly rejects. All this does for the book is make you question what you read and that is never a bad thing. At its core, ‘‘Pill City’’ is not a book about people, but a broken city. In this, the book achieves its goal and as a reader you feel better informed after reading the book and not patronised or lied to. If you plan to read investigative journalism, it always helps to remember to think for yourself as well. Original review on thebookbag.co.uk

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this book not long after its release date in 2017. I couldn't put it down. Given the opioid crisis our country had yet to move anywhere past, Kevin Deutsch's timeliness couldn't have been better. I assumed this story would soar to best seller lists and I couldn't wait to watch it on film at my local cinema.
As I started to Google information and to seek out more information, or gossip, about who "Brick" and "Wax" really were, I slowly started to find some reviews/editorials that gave me pause.
Various reporters were speculating on the veracity of this the author's accounts. Were they right? The elements of Pill City did fit together as perfectly as any fictional novel I'd ever encountered. Deep down I wondered how Deutsch captured so many intricate details from so many points of view. The author appears to be flying overhead in a drone poised for a first person view of every major event in the the story's timeline. So I stopped reading it.
This year, I began taking classes on creative non-fiction. Pill City has popped into my mind multiple times since I first started it. I still hoped someone would make a mini-series for television on the topic. (A mini-series because Freddie Gray's story should be given equal screen time as it was the catalyst for Pill City's effectiveness. Not to mention, increasing focus on the systemic racism that has plagued America for centuries.)
After watching similar events unfold in the years since, and before, from seeing the myriad of cases of police corruption and the false information being disseminated about Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and the Covid-19 vaccines, I wanted to go back and reread the story.
Today, I completed it. I still have some minor doubts, but overall, I'm so happy to have finished the story. Even if there were slight embellishments/creativity in the telling of this story, much of it appears to capture a lot of the experiences our country has learned about since organized crime has been reported on.
While I advise reading this with "a grain of salt." I still think it is a good read and I find myself wondering where all the characters are today. I think it is worth your time.

[David Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a truly riveting story about 2 teenagers who changed the drug scene in Baltimore (and less directly in other cities) for the worse. There are comments and several articles that question the truthfulness of the tale, and while at times I can certainly see why, the reality is that I personally don't care. While portions of the book seem like unlikely things to be admitted to a reporter after many years (and sometimes decades) of secrecy, it's the fact that the story could be true that matters. The addition of technology to the ability to sell and buy drugs is an important fact and a major part of the book, but the biggest take-away for me came elsewhere. The author makes the reader truly feel a lot of sympathy for the murdering, drug lord main characters. It doesn't take any journalistic sleight of hand to do this as the author simply tells you the character's horribly traumatic, depressing, and disturbing past. Whether or not this specific person ever existed isn't the point as real people have certainly have lived through the exact scenario described. What the reader decides to do with that understanding is up to them. It doesn't matter if the exact groups the author described going through Baltimore trying to help addicts get clean actually existed, because there are people doing that work throughout cities all over America. They need more help and they need more funding, whether this book is fact or fiction.

[Elite Group · Rating 3 out of 5]

The building of a drug empire

In this thought-provoking book we meet two 18 year old teenagers looking for a route out of poverty in America. When riots in Baltimore in 2015 occurred, their chance of escape came and they began looting pharmacies, stealing over $100 million worth of opiates.

The plan they developed was to use their gang connections and programming skills to set up a high tech drug delivery service. As a result they became America’s youngest drug lords and, in the process, sparked gang warfare and a nationwide wave of both addiction and murder.

This is a work of non-fiction and is as gripping as any fictional thriller. It tells the story of one of the most profitable illicit opiate dealing schemes in the history of America, and at times I had to remind myself that this was not fiction but had actually happened.

The book contains a very helpful glossary of terms as well as a list of the dealers, the customers and the investigators – most names having been changed to disguise the identities of those involved. However, we learn that even today one of the teenagers is prospering in Silicon Valley.

This is a real eye-opener of a book giving an insight into the Baltimore underworld.

Mr Theatre

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

[Sienna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pill City follows the opiate outbreak of 2015 and the chaos it caused from multiple perspectives including law enforcement, gang members, drug addicts, and people who have suffered a loss such as family members of people who died from drug overdoses or gang warfare. The book is named after a drug ring that was created by two tech-savvy honor roll students who knew how to code and their way around drugs.
Kevin Deutsch did a good job giving details about what happened during this time and the effort he put into this is extremely noteworthy. The book is put together from interviews he personally did with people who were directly involved in the chain of events. He creates a personal connection from you to the people in the book by giving their real-life experiences.
I highly recommend this book, but I will give a warning that it is not for everybody. There are points in the book that get dry and other points in the book that might be too graphic for certain people. As is is made from interviews, it does not follow a completely linear timeline or stay with one person in particular, but it does generally stay from the perspectives of certain key people. Pill City did a good job of showing me how big this problem is, and how under the rug this problem has been pushed.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire by Kevin Deutsch (St. Martin's Press 2017) (363.450975). I call “bullshit” on this story, readable and fun though it was. The author purports to have reported two mild-mannered high school students who created an online drug empire on the “Dark Web.” Kevin Deutsch and St. Martin's Press offer this book as nonfiction, but my internal antennae tells me that James Frey, late of A Million Little Pieces scandal and fame, has nothing on author Kevin Deutsch. Apparently few if any of the factual details offered in this book can be substantiated. After reading too many quotes and passages offered as mental conclusions of the characters to which neither the author nor any other source could possibly have been privy, I have concluded that this tale is almost certainly purely fictional. Maybe the bare bones of the story are true, but I'm willing to bet that little else is. My rating: 6.5/10, finished 1/11/18.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It really sucks to finish what I thought was a GREAT non-fiction book, only to find out that the entire story is largely regarded as totally made-up. Deutsch offers a vigorous defense of his book in spite of his many detractors, but in the end, too many people think this book is a total fabrication. There is not one person who can corroberate Deutsch's account of young Brick and Wax's drug delivery empire. No police officers, no federal agents, no addicts, no hospital workers, no doctors, no social workers...NOBODY can attest to the validity of this incredible story. That's pretty weird. A simple google search will bring up a ton of articles that cast doubt on this book, and the arguments are pretty compelling against this book. So I'd have to say, reading this seems like a total waste of time.

[Tom Whalen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good read, I liked how the author wove the different stories together into a coherent narrative. I knew about this story previously and its impact on the accessibility of pills and I have been wanting to read this. I like that one of the programmer kids got away; sometimes good people do bad things and life presented these kids with an opportunity they seized. And while their choices resulted in a lot of casualties....would the opioid epidemic in urban communities have gotten the attention it received without this story? This book barely touched on Baltimore PD's decision to stop policing black communities in the wake of the Freddie Grey riots which had a direct cause in the open market sale of these drugs, their spread throughout the country and the deaths that resulted from overdoses and intra-gang warfare.

[Michael Leedom · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is almost certainly not a reporting of fact. There are details included in day-to-day conversations that just would not have been revealed to the author by anyone involved in the drug trade who is at least acting with minimal caution. There is the glaring issue of unsubstantiated facts: people and stories that the author insists are protected by pseudonyms, yet conflict with the known public record. Two of these non-people are Marvin Grier and Jimmy Masters. The Baltimore Sun has also pointed out the holes in this book in a 2017 article.

The available evidence, the odd yet cliched pulp writing style, the inability to substantiate claims, all point to one conclusion: Deutsch made this story up.

[Patti · Rating 5 out of 5]

We all know drugs are undermining our country but who knew that two 18 year olds played a role in today's opium crisis? Unbelievable - except it's true. I read this book in two days but I am still thinking about this book days later and wondering what in the world we can do to change the dynamics that make drugs so attractive to both users and the sellers. The enormity of this is what shocks me, but there are signs in the book that show how one person can make a difference in the lives of those around us.

[Karen]

After reading the first chapter, I was so incredulous that this book is nonfiction as described, that I essentially decided not to read it for that reason. After reading Sam Quinones's Dreamland and Beth Macy's Dopesick, two excellent examples of in depth investigate journalistic books on the opioid crisis, I found that Deutsch's tale seemed like an over the top plot-driven exaggeration. I can't really say this is a review since I didn't actually read it. I tend to believe the doubt casted on the veracity of this book.

[Sam B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story about some horrifying entrepreneurial decisions. My primary thought throughout most of the book was "as a country we've got to find some way to provide these kids with a constructive outlet." You can't deny their business acumen; it's entirely shameful their "best" avenue was building a drug empire. Great cast of characters - the full range of heroes to cheer for and despicable villains.