Black Mafia Family

In the early 1990s, brothers Demetrius and Terry Flenory, known as ‘Big Meech’ and ‘Southwest T’, rose from the slums of Detroit to build one of the largest cocaine empires in America: the Black Mafia Family. After a ten-year climb to the top of the drug game, the Flenorys had it all: a fleet of Bentleys and Ferraris, a 500-man workforce operating in six states and an estimated quarter of a billion in drug sales. They bought truckloads of coke from the deadly Mexican mafia, socialized with hip-hop moguls and built allegiances with rap superstars like Young Jeezy and Fabolous. Yet even as the BMF was attracting celebrity attention, they created a cult of violence that struck fear into a city and threatened to spill beyond the boundaries of the underworld. Ruthlessness fueled their rise to power; greed and that same ruthlessness led to their downfall.

When the brothers began clashing in 2003, the flashy Big Meech risked it all on a shot at legitimacy in the music industry. At the same time, a team of investigators who had pursued BMF for years began to home in on the organization’s weaknesses. Using a high-stakes wiretap operation, the police and the DEA inched toward their goal of destroying the Flenorys’ empire and ending the reign of a crew suspected of selling thousands of kilos of cocaine and involvement in half a dozen unsolved murders.

What they said about the book:

‘A stunning expose of a crime empire that collapsed under the weight of its own success’ – PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY

About the author

MARA SHALHOUP is a decorated journalist and senior editor with alternative US news weekly Creative Loafing. She started as a crime reporter and has won a Clarion Award, two nominations for a Livingston Award and was Atlanta’s Journalist of the Year. She lives with her husband in Georgia.