In this ground-breaking and utterly compelling book, Toby Muse draws on 15 years of reporting on the drug war in Colombia, giving readers unprecedented access to the entire cocaine supply.
Kilo
Life and Death Inside the Secret World of the Cocaine Cartels
By Toby Muse
Ebury Press / Hardback / £16.99 / 26 March 2020
Join the deadly journey of cocaine, from farmer to kingpin.
Meet Maria. Maria doesn’t see herself as a criminal. She’s just a farmhand picking the crops that never lose money: coca.
This is Cachote. He prays to the Virgin of the Assassins that his bullets find their target. If he misses, he’ll have to answer to the cartel who pay him to take out their enemies.
Pedro works the coca labs. But this laboratory is hidden deep in the jungle, and he turns coca leaves into coca paste, a step just short of cocaine.
And finally, here is Alex. Alex is a drug-lord and decides where the drug goes next: into Europe or the US. And he wields the power of life and death over everyone around him.
Following one brick of cocaine from Colombia’s jungles to the Pacific Ocean as it races to join global underworld economy, Kilo is an unprecedented journey to the violent heart of the cocaine industry. On the way we will meet drug lords, contract killers, drug mules, cartel witches, as well as the Colombian police and US Coast Guard who are desperately trying to stop the kilo reach the consumers in the world’s richest countries.
Toby Muse has been on the ground in the drug war for over a decade, earning the trust of those involved on all sides. Telling the human stories of how the world’s second most popular drug gets from the Colombian jungle to the London street corner, Kilo is a devastating account of a multi-billion-pound business whose influence reaches across the world.
Discussion points
There is more cocaine in the world than ever, a result of a slowly crumbling peace process between the Colombian government and Marxist rebels.
UK police are seizing record amounts of cocaine. The drug funds gangs in the UK and the rest of the world, fuelling violence.
This cocaine is destabilizing parts of Latin America and empowering criminal gangs which then fuel emigration towards the US border
How effective is the war on drugs? (running for five decades without victory in sight).
The human story of cocaine – the men and women who live and die in cocaine.
“Kilo is surely the best account of the cocaine trade that will be ever be written, as well as the most incredible work of investigative journalist I’ve read.”
“Toby Muse goes beyond stereotypical crutches and achieves an honest and nuanced portrait of Colombia’s cancerous cocaine industry. Muse gradually reveals not just the stakes and the human toll behind every line of cocaine, but also the reasons why freeing Colombia from this deadly industry has proven so difficult. Kilo will prove enlightening even to those who lived first-hand the horrors of the country’s civil war.”
“In fifteen years covering Colombia, this is the best book I’ve ever read about the cocaine trade.”
“‘Kilo explores the trenches of the drug trade like few other books. With vivid writing and deep access to the underworld borne from his decades in the field, Muse has produced a must-read for those trying to understand why decades of bloodshed and billions of dollars haven’t won the war on drugs.’ ”
ABOUT TOBY MUSE
Toby Muse is a British-American writer, television reporter, documentary filmmaker and foreign correspondent. He has reported from the front lines of the conflicts in Colombia, Iraq and Syria. He has embedded with soldiers, rebels and drug cartels, producing exclusive reports from cocaine laboratories and guerrilla jungle camps. He lived in Bogota, Colombia for more than fifteen years, reporting across South America and the endless drug war.
Toby is available for interviews, features and events.