The author, John Sack, claims to be the founder of literary journalism, 'the one new literary form of the twentieth century'. A journalist, reporter, writer, producer, and special correspondent for CBS News, Sack spent twelve years 'fearlessly shadowing and befriending the most powerful crime lord in the Chinese Mafia', interviewing his subjects in various places (including prisons) and cross-checking their accounts against one another’s.

In The Dragonhead, Sack gives his account of the lives and times of Chinese gang members headed by Johnny Kon. The Dragonhead is the term for the Godfather of Chinese Crime, used to describe Johnny Kon, the head of the Big Circle, a gang of Chinese criminals, many of them ex-Red Guards who swam the shark-infested seas to Hong Kong in the 70s and proceeded to terrorize the colony with their watch-shop burglaries, gun-fights in the streets and brutal gang wars in eateries and grand hotels.

Looking for a way to make huge profits and (or so Kon claimed) to pay back the Americans he held responsible for the war in Vietnam and so indirectly responsible for the deaths of his two young sons in Khmer Rouge-ravaged Cambodia, Kon began to deal in the drug-smuggling business. His father had warned him against dealing in drugs, but the huge profits involved and his visions of revenge got the better of him.

After all, he reasoned, if the British could force opium onto the Chinese in 1839 and the Americans can flood the Chinese market in the 1980s with smuggled-in, untaxed cigarettes that the Western world no longer want, why can’t the Chinese give the Americans something they desire? A simple matter of supply and demand, he tells his associates, his ‘brothers’ who, at first leery of the dreaded ‘white powder’, soon caught on to the vast profits involved. With Gotti arrested and the Italian Mafia being indicted one by one, now was the chance for the Big Circle to take on the mantle of provider to the waiting masses of addicts in America.

Sack traces Kon’s impoverished childhood in mainland China to his attempts at the fur trade in Hong Kong to all-out drug smuggling to more than a dozen countries all over the world. While Kon struggles to keep his unruly brood of sworn ‘brothers’ together, the latter feud and tick each other off, to the point of killing each other at the drop of a hat (or so it seemed), making Kon re-think his drug-running business and wish for a chance to go legit. But circumstances and his pugnacious brothers’ fragile egos intervene before he could retire, and someone informs on him to the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), the ugly spectre of betrayal (the cardinal sin of gangsters) raising its head. Will Johnny manage to root out the traitor before he gets fingered?

The writing style is verbose (e.g. various meals, accompanying music, Johnny Kon’s wardrobe are described in so much detail for so many times even though these have absolutely no impact on what was happening that this reader began to grit her teeth) and marked with verve that bordered on manic. In small doses, it can be entertaining and amusing, but over the entire course of 390 pages, proves very annoying.

However, it is a journalistic coup--after all, how many other intimate versions of the Big Circle gang have you read lately? And the author has certainly compiled details enough to fascinate any reader. For instance: How did those drug smugglers manage to get past customs? How exactly is the euphemistically-named ‘white powder’ hidden? What do these criminals do in their spare time? How do the mega-rich gangsters spend their wealth, legitimately or otherwise?

The Dragonhead stands as the one fascinating, intimate account of the life of Johnny Kon and his associates. Even though there are so many bosses and henchmen that it’s hard to keep them all straight (pun not intended), it is still possible to get, from a reading of The Dragonhead, an idea of the workings of one of the most feared and successful gang in the history of Chinese crime.


Recommended: Yes