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Kilo: Inside the Deadliest Cocaine Cartels―from the Jungles to the Streets Hardcover – March 24, 2020

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 318 ratings

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For fans of the Netflix show Narcos and readers of true crime, Kilo is a deeply reported account of life inside Colombia’s drug cartels, using unprecedented access in the cartels to trace a kilo of cocaine—from the fields where it is farmed, to the hit men who protect it, to the smuggling ships that bring it to American shores.

"Toby Muse’s tautly written account of his intimate prowl through Colombia’s narco world is both compelling and unforgettable. With Kilo, cocaine now has its own Dispatches. Simply kickass.”

— Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker and author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life


Cocaine is glamour, sex and murder. From the badlands of Colombia, it stretches across the globe, seducing, corrupting and destroying. A product that must be produced, distributed, and protected, it is both a harbinger of violence and a source of immense wealth. Beginning in the jungles and mountains of Colombia, it filters down to countryside villages and the nightclubs of the cities, attracting money, sex, and death. Each step in the life of a kilo reveals a different criminal underworld with its own players, rules, and dangers, ranging from the bizarre to the diabolical. The killers, the drug-lords, all find themselves seduced by cocaine and trapped in her world.

Seasoned war correspondent Toby Muse has witnessed each level of this underworld, fueled by the appetite for cocaine in America and Europe. In this riveting chronicle, he takes the reader inside Colombia’s notorious drug cartels to offer a never before look at the drug trade. Following a kilo of cocaine from its production in a clandestine laboratory to the smugglers who ship it abroad, he reveals the human lives behind the drug’s complicated legacy. Reporting on Colombia for the world’s most prestigious networks and publications, Muse gained unprecedented access to the extraordinary people who survive on the drug trade—farmers, smugglers, assassins—and the drug lords and their lovers controlling these multi-billion dollar enterprises. Uncovering stories of violence, sex, and money, he shows the allure and the madness of cocaine. And how the War on Drugs has been no match for cocaine.

Piercing this veiled world, Kilo is a gripping portrait of a country struggling to end this deadly trade even as the riches flow. A human portrait of criminals and the shocking details of their lives, Kilo is a chilling, unforgettable story that takes you deep into the belly of the beast.

Kilo includes 16 pages of photographs.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A deeply reported account of drug trafficking that traces a kilo of cocaine from field to smuggler." — USA Today

"Journalist Muse’s beautifully written debut takes a deep dive into the Colombian drug trade…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…This gripping account will linger in the mind of readers." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Like other daring foreign correspondents, Sebastian Junger and Chris Hedges among them, Muse has a talent for recognizing the intrinsic humanity in all his subjects, no matter how monstrously they may behave. . . . An unrelentingly tragic yet indispensable exposé of the never-ending war on drugs.”  — Kirkus Reviews

"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 journalism I’ve read. It’s a high-stakes yarn that shows each step of the drug ladder in vivid detail—from creation to consumption. A superb and important book." — Ben Westhoff, author of Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic

"In this riveting first-hand account that reads like a documentary, Toby Muse goes beyond stereotypical crutches and achieves an honest and nuanced portrait of Colombia’s cancerous cocaine industry, revealing not just the stakes but the human toll behind every line of cocaine. Kilo will prove enlightening even to those who lived firsthand the horrors of the country’s civil war." — Juanita Ceballos, Vice News

"Toby Muse’s tautly written account of his intimate prowl through Colombia’s narco world is both compelling and unforgettable. With Kilo, cocaine now has its own Dispatches. Simply kickass.” — Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker and author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

"A hair-raising, stream-of-consciousness ride via the glamor and glory of silicone busts, gold-plated guns, and fast cars to the inevitable wreckage that is cocaine." — Karl Penhaul, former CNN correspondent for Colombia

In Kilo, Toby Muse teleports the reader into the mad bloody tragic world of Colombian cocaine trafficking, so you can feel the beats at the discos packed with drug lords and beauty queens; smell the sweat of laborers toiling in the coca fields for a pittance; hear the dog of the gun slinger barking in the barrio. In doing so, he pens a love letter to one of the most beautiful and bloodiest countries on earth. — Ioan Grillo, author of El Narco and Blood Gun Money

"In fifteen years covering Colombia, this is the best book I’ve ever read about the cocaine trade. If you want to understand why the drugs are produced here, then how they get to the U.S., there’s no better guide." — Matthew Bristow, former Colombia bureau chief, Bloomberg News

"From Venezuelan coca pickers in Colombia’s badlands to Ecuadorian sailors plying the Pacific with tons of cocaine, Kilo explores the trenches of the drug trade like few other books. Muse has produced a must-read for those trying to understand Latin America, Washington foreign policy and why decades of bloodshed and billions of dollars haven’t won the war on drugs." — Jim Wyss, Miami Herald reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner

"Toby Muse’s firsthand dive into the depths of Colombia’s coca-filled jungles is as tragic and absurd as the decades-old drug war itself." — Joshua Goodman, Latin America correspondent for the Associated Press

"The result is a staggering work of reportage and social analysis. Muse is an experienced war journalist and for Kilo, he put himself into many dangerous situations to get incredible access to the narco-subcultures so few have witnessed." — CrimeReads

About the Author

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.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow; Illustrated edition (March 24, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0062905295
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062905291
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 318 ratings

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Toby Muse
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Toby Muse is an author, foreign correspondent and documentary filmmaker. His first book is Kilo: Inside the Deadliest Cocaine Cartels. He grew up in London, before moving to Bogota, Colombia where he reported on South America for the next 15 years. As a freelance journalist, he has worked for the New York Times, BBC, CNN, The Guardian and others. He has reported from the frontlines of the wars in Syria and Iraq. He lives in Washington, DC. He never declines an offer of rum from strangers. You can find more of his work at www.tobymuse.com

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
318 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2020
If you've wondered how a kilo of cocaine moves from Colombia to the U.S. and other markets, about the actors who make it happen, and those who try to stop it, then read "Kilo."

Toby Muse took considerable risks to humanely chronicle those who process, transport, and protect the kilo, and who work in this racket because it's often the only choice in a country with mostly broken civil institutions.

(And Muse exhibits an uncommon ability to get very tough subjects to reveal; few reporters have the acumen to get an assassin and cartel boss to reveal their demons and fears.)

You'll meet farmers who grow coca because it is more lucrative then bananas or coffee or just as likely, because a crime boss has ordered them to do so. You'll go to a coca plantation where Venezuelan refugees pick the leaf, then to a jungle lab as chemists process it into coca paste, and then powder.

As the kilo moves to a blighted outpost, you'll go inside brothels and bars where pickers, growers, and chemists unwind after a hard week's work; and then to Medellín, the nexus to ports on the Pacific and Caribbean coasts. There, you'll meet an ambitious yet conflicted cartel boss, his ruthless, paranoid (and bisexual) assassin, and a smuggler embarking a claustrophobic, improvised, submarine, risking his life, or possibly his freedom, for a lucrative payday.

Muse also sails on a U.S. Coast Guard cutter arresting smugglers in the eastern Pacific Ocean and goes on patrols with the Colombian army as they slash-and burn coca fields, only to see them grow in acreage the next time they visit.

Although the Coast Guard sailors seem convinced that interdictions truly impact the amount of cocaine for sale on U.S. streets, the Colombians were far less sanguine. Their work is far riskier, and the rank-and-file soldiers tacitly regard it as Sisyphean. One central theme of "Kilo" is that Colombia pays a disproportionate, far more terrible price for producing cocaine and fighting it than the U.S. does for interdicting it.

"Kilo" provokes other uncomfortable questions about the futility of the billions spent in the U.S.-sponsored War on Drugs. The demand for cocaine never goes away, and so many people in a place as needy and desperate as Colombia are not going to stop producing it in the absence of other options.
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2020
Nearly a decade has passed since I lived in Colombia for three years, during which I had developed a reading list for foreigners looking to get a pedestrian handle on the country's culture and history. Each book would capture a certain aspect of the politics or economy. "Kilo" was an instant addition to understand how the cocaine industry permeates society.

I still have "Killing Pablo" by Bowden on the list, but the Escobar / cartel era has been rendered more of an interesting chapter in Colombian history, and remains on the list because it lays the groundwork for the alliance with the United States.

"Kilo" paints a picture of the industry's next chapter: decentralization. And it does so from the points of view of the farmer in the coca town to the small-time entrepreneurs making mad dashes to realize a successful export. And every step in between.

Instant "Top Five Books on Colombia." Below is my list (I know, it's six now).

One Hundred Years of Solitude
Oblivion
Killing Pablo
Law of the Jungle
The Colombia Reader
Kilo
8 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2022
Toby Muse doesn’t disappoint with his poignant and colorful read on cocaine’s influence on the “war on drugs”. Muse successfully conveys the various stages of cocaine production. He delves deep into the soul of its main actors. Although no fault of Muse, I’ve read similar books on this topic and as with this book, questions ultimately go unanswered on the ways to end this fallacious drug war fueled by cocaine. Nonetheless, I recommend you give the book a go, you won’t be able to put it down.
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2020
Toby Muse has provided us with an unforgettable look at every link in the chain of the cocaine trade in Colombia. He brings us close to each actor from the impoverished Venezuelan "raspachin" or coca leaf stripper and their hardships, those who make the paste, the middle managers who move the product on to the city, the city gangs and hired killers, the faceless Capos, and then finally, those who navigate the appalling conditions and rough waters in the narco subs. In open conversations with anti narcotics police in Colombia, the US Coast Guard and others, Muse's book reads like fiction and is a timely reminder that we need to reevaluate the futility of the war on drugs. Essential reading for anyone with an interest in this field.
11 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2023
This book was written about the Cocaine industry in South America. My cousin did the investigative work and stayed embedded in South America for15 years to get this story.
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2023
Compelling....a different look at the cocaine trade and its social implications. Told from the perspective of those deeply involved.Excellent! A must read.
Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2020
its boring same old same ,you learn nothing new that hasn,t been written a hundred times before.
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2020
Very well written in a conversational style. The author tells the journey of a Kilo of cocaine moving from the Jungles to the Streets of America. Along the way unfold the stories of the many players whose lives are touched and even ruled by both sides of the drug war. The author tells these stories in a way that laves the reader feeling it is a personal conversation with an old friend.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Moises
3.0 out of 5 stars Buen comienzo… no logra sostenerse
Reviewed in Mexico on November 15, 2021
Algo le faltó, algunos capítulos se sienten forzados. Cuenta la historia desde la óptica colombiana y los últimos capítulos se enfocan en el control que impone USA para intentar detener el tráfico vía el pacifico. Ahí perdió el enfoque.