Backpackers up and down the Gringo Trail in South America have invariably heard of, if not read, Rusty Young’s Marching Powder. It’s the story of his friendship with a British inmate in Bolivia’s San Pedro Prison, where inmates buy their cells, and some of the best cocaine in the country is produced.

I recently came across a yellow, crumbling paperback copy of Charles Nicholl’s The Fruit Palace. It makes Rusty’s Big Adventure seem tame by comparison. With the spirit of gonzo in his blood and copious amounts of cocaine up his nose, Mr. Nicholl goes to Colombia to write The Great Cocaine Story.

The time is the early 80s, and cocaine has wrapped its champagne tendrils around the brain stems of New York and London’s finest, and Nicholl’s publisher wants the scoop. The lengths he goes to and the risks he takes are astonishing — talking his way into a meat-packing plant in Bogota he suspects is a front for cocaine trafficking, bussing into the Chocó and then boating downriver to Buanaventura on the Pacific Ocean (a very dangerous thing to do, even now), and ultimately getting involved in smuggling a briefcase of 100% pure cocaine out of Santa Marta.

The Fruit Palace appears to be out print. No matter. It received many printings during the 80s and 90s and, though never quite a bestseller, there’s plenty of used copies floating around out there. It is essential reading for anyone interested in South America.