Kilo: Inside the Deadliest Cocaine Cartels—From the Jungles to the Streets

Journalist Muse’s beautifully written debut takes a deep dive into the Colombian drug trade. In fascinating detail, Muse describes how leaves harvested from the coca fields in the nation’s mountains and jungles go to rustic labs, where workers produce coca paste. Then it’s on to the narco-militias, who turn the paste into bricks of cocaine and sell them to drug traffickers in Medellín. Distribution efforts involve shipping massive amounts of cocaine via drug mules via airplanes, as well as speed boats and semi-subs that play nautical cat-and-mouse with the U.S. Coast Guard. At great personal risk, the author interviewed Colombians involved in the trade—dealers, prostitutes, and sicarios (the paid assassins who keep the law of the drug trade); their intimate stories form the heart of the book. A young Medellín coke trafficker, Alex, is surprisingly open about his life of crime, and while he’s far from sympathetic, readers will feel sad when he’s gunned down at a birthday party in front of his fiancé. In the bleak epilogue, Muse offers hope, but sees no end to the “forever war on drugs.” This gripping account will linger in the mind of readers. Agent: Ethan Bassoff, Ross Yoon Literary. (Mar.)