In 2004, journalist Michael Kodas joined local mountain climbers from home on an expedition to Mount Everest. He anticipated an exhilarating and arduous adventure among a group of like-minded idealists that he could report to his readers back in Connecticut. But on the Himalayan mountain, he discovered thieves, prostitutes, con men, and blackmailers. There were people who would do anything for a quick buck, or a guarantee of reaching the top. And some of them were on his own team. Thieves stole equipment on which the team's lives depended, Kodas's life was threatened by one of his teammates, and a climbing partner was beaten unconscious by another in Base Camp. He returned from the Himalaya disillusioned. But a plea for help from the daughter of a mountaineer who vanished on Everest on the very day that Kodas had retreated from his own disintegrating team prompted him to return to Everest and uncover an underworld that preys on unsuspecting climbers on major peaks around the world. HIGH CRIMES is a shocking expose of the dark underside of Everest: people stepping over dying climbers on their way up; unscrupulous con men who sell faulty oxygen tanks that leave climbers without air when their lives depend on it; drugs and prostitution in Base Camp; and people all but murdered in the cutthroat race to get to the top. Illustrated with incredible photographs and written with thriller-like pacing, HIGH CRIMES is a gripping and fascinating audio.
Climbing Mount Everest has always been an imposing prospect for the intrepid souls who brave its peaks, but, as author Michael Kodas makes clear, nowadays the thing to fear the most may not be the mountain's aloof and forbidding precipices, but the opportunistic shysters and outright criminals exploiting the legions of mountaineers making the climb. Kodas--who joined a diverse group of climbers in a major expedition--paints a world of international thievery and terror. Narrator Mark Deakins speaks in a refined tone as he details the ways suburban warriors--perhaps ones with too much time on their hands and too much money in their pockets--have soured the Everest experience. J.S.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
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