Dope

by Thierry Sagnier

As drug-related deaths soar in D.C. and Northern Virginia, even experienced users, such as Colin's street musician friend, Willie, are dying. Dope takes place two years after the Amazon Bestseller Thirst , the first Colin Marsh mystery in which Colin and Mamadou Dioh battle a drug lord who has kidnapped a young girl. Now, Colin is rebuilding his lost sobriety and the death of his friend gnaws at him. Mamadou cannot forgive drug dealers for the death of his sister Amélie and his ward, Antwone. In Dope, Colin, Mamadou, and a handful of recovering Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) friends are soon battling a conspiracy that extends far beyond local neighborhoods. A former cop, a crime lord and a county watchdog are plotting to kill thousands of addicts with poison. Revenge, redemption, mayhem, and dark humor play out with insights into addiction and the shadowy world of dependency and exploitation

296 pages, Paperback

First published December 22, 2015

About the author

I've been a writer most of my life. I've done a few books, radio, documentaries, online stuff, magazines and newspapers. Can't imagine doing anything else although it's feast or famine, with the emphasis on famine.

Still, writing (and playing music)are the most fun things one can do with pants on.

According to my late mother, I was conceived in an army truck and born on the radio.

Well, almost.

I was actually born in the freight elevator of the American hospital just outside of Paris, France. A rookie policeman delivered me between the third and fourth floor during a rare snowstorm in the City of Lights.

My parents met at the end of World War II. Both were soldiers with the Free French, the breakaway remnant of the French military that refused to surrender to the Germans after the capitulation of France. Their eyes met and that same evening—or so I was told—they consummated their union in a US Army truck. The one-night stand would last a lifetime.

After the war, both found jobs as actors in a soap opera aired on Radio France. My father, who spoke English, portrayed a not-too-bright American GI married to my mother, a wily French maiden. The show was live, wildly popular, and broadcast daily. One evening as they were reciting their lines to the microphones, my mother went into labor. She never quite made it to the delivery room.

My mother was an artist, a musician and an author. My father was a journalist who had studied violin at the Versailles conservatory. I was destined to write or play music. I do both.

My first literary work was an out-and-out theft. I was six years old and envious of a child celebrity, Minou Drouet, a little girl whose poems had been published in French magazines. Her name was on everyone’s lips. She was a genius, an enfant prodige, and the decorated pride of the nation

I decided to be the same. I copied some poems from a book in my parents’ library, appropriated authorship, and proudly showed the works to my mother. She was thrilled and immediately summoned the media. My subterfuge failed and a fiasco ensued. I was seriously chastised and I’m not sure my mother ever really forgave me for not being the wunderkind she thought she deserved.

My family moved to the United States when I was ten. By age sixteen I had written a series of short stories in English—my chosen writing language—on the unfairness of society and the tribulations of being an immigrant. I wrote songs, poetry, essays, fiction, a play, and complicated letters to an imaginary friend who, I think, got bored. One day he left.

I struggled through both American high school and the curriculum of a French lycée. I went on to attend Georgetown University’s Foreign Service School but dropped out when offered a copyboy position with the Washington Post.

In time I became an in-house free-lancer specializing in the nascent hippy movement. I wrote about radicals, Yippies, Black Panthers, drug dealers, thieves and scammers, bikers and rock stars. I was in the newsroom during Watergate. I participated ever-so-slightly in the scandal’s coverage by fielding telephone calls from Martha Mitchell, the demented wife of Richard Nixon’s duplicitous Attorney General, John Mitchell. I left the paper after a noisy disagreement with the then-editor, Ben Bradlee, who did not approve of a story I had written for the Sunday Post about being a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.

By then, I had written Bike! Motorcycles and the People Who Ride Them. Harper & Row published it, but unfortunately,