{"id":106285,"date":"2016-12-31T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-12-31T17:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=106285"},"modified":"2016-12-30T13:13:53","modified_gmt":"2016-12-30T18:13:53","slug":"tennis-mr-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/31\/tennis-mr-nice\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis with Mr. Nice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re away until January 3, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2016. Enjoy your holiday!<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_96941\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/howardmarks.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-96941\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-96941\" class=\"wp-image-96941\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/howardmarks.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"439\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/howardmarks.jpg 3846w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/howardmarks-300x220.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/howardmarks-768x562.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/howardmarks-1024x749.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-96941\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo courtesy of the author.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>My week with the late Howard Marks, drug smuggler and author.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In June 1995, on a magazine assignment that never came to fruition, I flew to Palma, Majorca, to spend a week with Howard Marks. He was just out of prison then, having served seven of a twenty-five year sentence on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations charges at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Howard\u2019s backstory was well known in the UK, but less so in the U.S., despite a Frontline documentary on his worldwide marijuana smuggling. As a young working-class Welsh philosophy student at Oxford, Howard had started out as a small-time dealer and, in his smart, amiable way, worked his way up the ladder to become a bona-fide drug kingpin, a Robin Hood to stoners across the British Isles. \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2016\/apr\/12\/drug-baron-howard-marks-mr-nice-violent-mafia\" target=\"_blank\">Mr. Nice<\/a>,\u201d as one of his aliases had it, dealt only in soft drugs; today he might be an upstanding citizen of Washington or Colorado. To the everlasting chagrin of the British police, he beat the rap once at the Old Bailey\u2014he\u2019d been caught moving fifteen tons of dope from a fishing trawler off the Irish coast onto dry land\u2014by offering the unimpeachable defense that he\u2019d been working for MI6 at the time. He was not a drug smuggler, he said, but a narc.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/13\/tennis-with-mr-nice\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read More &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019re away until January 3, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2016. Enjoy your holiday! My week with the late Howard Marks, drug smuggler and author. &nbsp; In June 1995, on a magazine assignment that never came to fruition, I flew to Palma, Majorca, to spend a week with Howard Marks. He [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26379],"tags":[5654,4846,7583,862,4131,21941,1092,1132,21942,21946,11989,3137,8902,11218,17484,288,21944,21945,21943],"class_list":["post-106285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2016","tag-bill-clinton","tag-britain","tag-crime","tag-drugs","tag-hotels","tag-howard-marks","tag-indiana","tag-interviews","tag-mallorca","tag-mobsters","tag-obituaries","tag-oxford","tag-prison","tag-restaurants","tag-smuggling","tag-tennis","tag-terre-haute","tag-the-mob","tag-u-k"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tennis with Mr. Nice: My Week with Howard Marks<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jonathan Wilson remembers an encounter with the late drug smuggler and author.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/31\/tennis-mr-nice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tennis with Mr. Nice by Jonathan Wilson\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 31, 2016 \u2013 We\u2019re away until January 3, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2016. 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