Reviewed by Carol Thompson for Readers' Favorite

David Tuch’s The Wireless Operator: The Untold Story of the British Sailor Who Invented the Modern Drug Trade is a narrative of 20th-century crime and politics. Blending investigative research with vivid storytelling, Tuch reconstructs the life of Harold Derber, born Hyman Tuchverderber in Manchester, who transforms from a Jewish schoolboy in wartime England into a figure crossing the worlds of espionage, organized crime, and international smuggling. The early chapters follow Derber’s adolescence during the Manchester Blitz, his escape into the Merchant Navy, and his fascination with radio technology. Tuch skillfully places Derber’s training as a wireless operator within Britain’s broader struggle for survival, capturing the camaraderie and loneliness of life at sea. The detailed accounts of convoys under U-boat threat, combined with the discipline of Morse code and secrecy, lay the groundwork for a life lived on the fringes of legality.

As the narrative unfolds, Derber is drawn into global currents of power. The book highlights his interactions with Cuban officials, American lawyers, and figures such as Fidel Castro and Meyer Lansky, showing how Derber’s skills in communication and navigation became tools for ventures far beyond their original purpose. Tuch demonstrates how postwar dislocation, Cold War politics, and the expansion of narcotics markets created opportunities for men like Derber, who bridged disparate worlds of intelligence, diplomacy, and criminal enterprise. Tuch draws on declassified intelligence reports, interviews, and even unpublished memoirs to reconstruct events, while never losing sight of Derber’s personal struggles. The prologue, which opens with a violent misidentification in North Carolina, sets the tone: Derber was a man who could be mistaken, pursued, or erased, yet somehow endured. The Wireless Operator reveals how a boy who once marveled at the magic of radio could become enmeshed in the networks that powered the drug trade.