This is a big, noble book by a proper reporter who travels the world and gives the Mr Bigs of global crime a poke in the eye. His grand thesis is that we need effective world government to deal with the globalisation of money-laundering, drugs, arms-dealing and narco-trafficking. One is inclined to say: fat chance.

Misha Glenny was the BBC reporter in Yugoslavia in 1990 who prophesied gloom and was taken aside by the thought police and told to cheer up. Glenny was proved right as Tito’s old Yugoslavia splintered apart, and some of the best writing in the book concerns the Balkans mafia.

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