“Superb … A painstaking documentary thriller.”
— New Society
“It is an excellent book, that any reader who wants to be informed about Trujillo should read. I have used information the book provides because it’s an excellent reportage about the killing of Trujillo. … Investigative reporting which reads like a riveting police mystery. A fascinating book.”
— Mario Vargas Llosa, author of Feast of the Goat, Miami Herald
“He was probably the most hated dictator in the Americas [and] became the archetype of the hemisphere’s dictators. Ruling his island nation as a personal fiefdom, he alone decided the destiny of his countrymen. Thousands were killed, thousands simply disappeared … Diederich is at his best as he recounts the intrigue and power politics of the era.”
— Christian Science Monitor
“Trujillo was a man of overweening vanity, cruelty and vulgarity. He perverted the group around him so effectively that after his death his supporters were able to feed a prisoner suspected of anti-Trujillo activities with the flesh of his own son [and] brought him his son’s head on a plate. He died of a heart attack on the spot.
“Mr. Diederich tells the story of the assassination of Trujillo by a group of conspirators. A veteran reporter for Time magazine, he has a masterly gift for keeping the story running rapidly and vividly, while at the same time keeping a tight hold on the threads of the tangled plot.”
— Financial Times
“The story told by Diederich, veteran Caribbean correspondent and a pungent writer, is both tragic and humorous, with a wildly improbable plot. If the book were a novel the story would be dismissed as preposterous. But it is all true and Diederich describes the actions and motives with considerable zest. Much blood flows and at the end there is scarcely a single character left alive.”
— The Guardian
“An absorbing, minute-by-minute account of the assassination, what led to it, and the savage revenge taken on the assassins, their colleagues and families. Diederich tells of CIA complicity, first with Trujillo, later with those who killed him.”
— Publishers Weekly