Transnational crimes, crimes crossing state borders—smuggling, hijackings, blackmail and bombings by terrorist groups, economic and currency frauds percolating na-tional boundaries—all present increasingly threatening problems of crime control. If they are to be at all contained, and the need to contain them is obvious, effective international collaboration will be required far in excess of what has been achieved by past efforts at drug and alcohol control.

Bruun, Pan and Rexed have been prominently involved in these efforts. They write from a rich experience. Bruun is the research director of the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies in Hel-sinki, Pan is the coordinator of the International Research Group on Drug Legislation and Programs in Geneva, Rexed is the secretary of the Swedish Narcotics Commission and also an appellate judge in Stockholm. Their manuscript was prepared under the auspices of the International Research Group on Drug Legislation and Programs, a group formed in Geneva following a special meeting in 1970 of the United Nations Narcotics Commis-sion. The aim of this group, commonly called the Consortium, is to provide information useful for the planning of international collaboration in drug programs and controls. The Consortium has undertaken a number of research projects, several of which have resulted in published works; The Gentlemen's Club is the most recent of these.

The authors submitted their manuscript for critical commen-taries by leading authorities in this country as well as in England, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. It is comprehensive, authoritative and original. All this sounds forbiddingly and aridly academic but the the impression is false. To a field rich in dema-goguery and fertile in opinionated ignorance, the authors bring facts and wit.

It is a sad tale they tell. Of prejudiced pressure groups and national representatives with elephantiasis of the ego combining most courteously to preclude effective international control of the growth, manufacture, export and distribution of opium, heroin, cannabis, the psychotropic drugs and alcohol. We have all paid heavy costs for these repeated failures of international collabo-ration—and we will continue to pay.

Why should this book be part of a series on crime and justice? The many links between drugs, alcohol and crime are clear enough, as is the link with the crime of smuggling; but there are more fundamental reasons why this book is important both to the scholars of problems of crime control and to the administrators of all criminal justice agencies. It speaks with compelling power to the challenging tasks of international control of transnational crime, which present a larger threat to all societies than crime has ever done before. Further, it is an important study in another issue of central concern to scholar and practitioner alike: the dominant role of half-baked ideologies, catch phrases, law and order promises, and powerful but inaccurate affirmations as substitutes for knowledge in devising crime control policies.

Bruun, Pan and Rexed do not stop short at a precise if depressing history of failures. They offer recommendations, immediate and long-range, to turn a gentlemen's club of seasoned veterans of ineptitude into an effective international instrument of social control.

NORVAL MORRIS