Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail

Rusty Young, an Australian backpacker, meets Thomas McFadden, a British drug trafficker who is serving a sentence in San Pedro prison in La Paz, Bolivia. The prison is unusual: inmates buy their cells, live with their families and run businesses, and cocaine is made on site. McFadden gives tours to tourists, which is how Young hears the story, and the two work together to write it. The book is a nonfiction account of the prison's economy and of McFadden's life, and of how the pair planned an escape.

Readers of true crime and travel stories will find it eye-opening, though the facts have been disputed.

Clear-cut; an easy read.

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