SOURCE: Bemrose, John. “Cocaine's Captives.” Maclean's 110, no. 35 (1 September 1997): 56.

In the following review, Bemrose derides García Márquez's lack of analysis as well as his focus on upper-class characters in News of a Kidnapping, but notes that the book is still an unforgettable piece of journalism.

One autumn evening in 1990, in Bogotá, Maruja Pachon and her sister-in-law, Beatriz Villamizar, were being driven home from work by Pachon's chauffeur when their lives spun into nightmare. Two cars suddenly cut off their Renault, forcing it to stop. With chilling swiftness, gunmen stepped up to the vehicle, killed the chauffeur, forced the women into their own vehicles and drove off. Pachon and Villamizar had just become pawns in a murderous, long-term confrontation between the Colombian government and Pablo Escobar, the head of the country's notorious international drug trade. The two women—they both worked for a government agency promoting the country's...