From Cocalero to Kingpin: New Book Tracks Cocaine Supply Chain

[TomSea]

From Cocalero to Kingpin: New Book Tracks Cocaine Supply Chain
Seth Robbins

An anti-drug officer is pictured in this still from the new book: "Kilo: Life and Death Inside the Secret World of the Cocaine Cartels"

A new book by a veteran reporter provides a comprehensive picture of Colombia’s modern-day cocaine trafficking networks and their devastating impact on the society that surrounds them.

In Kilo: Life and Death Inside the Secret World of the Cocaine Cartels, British-American journalist Toby Muse provides an account of Colombia’s security woes that offers both breadth and depth. Over the course of nearly 300 pages, he takes readers from the Andean coca fields and drug labs to the go-fast boats that ply their trade in South America’s coastal waters, lingering over at least a dozen locales in between.

A chief virtue of this book — and what distinguishes it from countless other surveys of the drug trade — is its structure. Muse reports his way up the Colombian cocaine supply chain link by link, essentially tracking the life cycle of the mythical kilo of the title. This approach gives him the flexibility to cast a wide net, but it endows the book with the narrative momentum that is often lacking from such books. Presented within this framework, Muse’s reportage becomes easier for the reader to consume and his conclusions easier to retain.

Read more at:  https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/cocalero-kingpin-toby-muse-kilo/