Weed Man Review: Drugs and Guns and…Lady Di? Oh My!

What do you get when you mix a slightly right of the aisle morning talk show host, a Caribbean Island trip, and several hundred pounds of free-floating pot bales? ….I’m not quite sure either—but I think it has a few hundred pages and is sold on Amazon and at bookstores near you.

DC native John McCaslin, former Washington Times columnist and newly minted co-host of Talk Radio Network’s America’s Morning News, recently debuted his second book, Weed Man-The Remarkable Journey of Jimmy Divine. A true tale about a Robin Hood-esque, teetotaling, reluctant drug runner, Jimmy Moree (a.k.a. Jimmy Divine), Weed Man’s exploits run the gamut from amusing to hair-raising. Some of the names have been changed to protect…the not-quite-so innocent.

McCaslin stumbled upon Jimmy and his story while on a frequent visit to his home on Harbor Island—just off the Bahamas. A local combination baker/real estate agent (go figure), knowing of McCaslin’s background in the writing field, arranged a meeting between Moree and the Washington journalist. Enough time had passed; Moree could tell his story. After listening to the tale, McCaslin immediately knew this was true literary fodder. Once trust was gained, and over the course of several interviews sitting around his kitchen table, Jimmy unleashed a story that begins with his accidentally stumbling into a prince’s ransom worth of pot washing up on the beach while innocently exercising one day, to almost involuntarily becoming one of the nation’s biggest traffickers of Colombian weed along with a rag-tag team of cohorts—only to be finally brought down after years of successful commerce by the Reagan Administration DEA.

Suffice it to say the story includes everything from deadly, if not humorous, gunplay to stowing herbal bounty in a Church during Easter services, to serving poison barracuda to a pesky neighbor, to attending the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di. What makes this a compelling read, aside from the obviously interesting adventure, is the fact that although Jimmy Divine could be the antihero—his mindset and the fact that he uses much of his ill gotten gain to aid the poor farmers, neighbors, and relatives in his island community make him the unlikely hero. Add to that his rather tragic upbringing and surrounding strife, and Jimmy is not so much criminal as sympathetic subject. Combine all with the sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant, sometimes just downright scary array of incidents and you have a book you can’t put down. Far be it for this writer to be a spoiler for those of you who haven’t yet read the book, but without offering any more of the actual plot and ending, it is enough to divulge that Jimmy still resides in the Bahamas and won’t be making a trip to the U.S. mainland anytime soon.