High Crimes The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed By Michael Kodas Hperion, New York 2008 pp 368, $24.95 (hardback)

When American journalist, Michael Kodas, his wife and six others joins a commercial expedition to climb Chomolungma in 2004 he expected hardships. But nothing prepared him for the greed, corruption, ruthless ambition and cruelty on the slopes of the world's highest mountain.

In High Crimes, Kodas portrays the dark side of modern Himalayan mountaineering in which crooks lead commercial expeditions, extortionist guides demand payment before rescue, oxygen and equipment caches are ransacked by bounty hunters, base camp prostitution is rife and there are even murderers loose.

Jon Krakauer's 1996 epic, Into Thin Air, looked at the lethal effect of over-commercialisation of expeditions so that over-crowding on the summit delayed descent and lead to the death in storms of dozens of climbers. Pulitzer-prize winner journalist Kodas digs deeper into the criminal world of mountain climbing where the clueless climbers and unscrupulous commercial guides prey on expeditions.

Kodas documents the commercialism on the Chinese side of the mountain where corruption, crime and prostitution are rampant. Kodas' own Romanian guide and his Sherpa wife fall out on the mountain and his expedition disintegrates in a mess of recrimination, theft, lies and violence. Oxygen bottles are stolen, high camps ransacked, guides extort money before agreeing to rescue, counterfeit oxygen tanks are sold, climbers see no problem leaving others to die in their hurry to get to the top and win fame and glory.

Misdeeds that would be minor at sea level are deadly at 8,000m on the summit ridge of Everest. But the difference between good and bad, right and wrong are even more stark up there. Morality doesn't get thinner as one goes higher.

High Crimes doesn't pretend to give us the whole picture, and its grim account is openly negative about mountaineering expeditions. It is obvious that is not the whole story, one can't extrapolate from a few bad experiences. For every case of abandonment at high altitude there are ten instances where mountaineers have forsaken their chance to summit to rescue a fellow-climber in distress. For every guide who asks for advance payment before rescuing climbers in trouble, there are many others who will help without asking.

But Kodas warns us that corruption and crime can follow the over-commercialisation of mountain climbing and can result in much ugliness.