Life Sentence: The Brief and Tragic Career of Baltimore’s Deadliest Gang Leader

Montana “Tana” Barronette, the focus of this scorching true-crime narrative from bestseller Bowden (Black Hawk Down), was born in 1995 and grew up in Sandtown, one of Baltimore’s worst neighborhoods. His community was plagued by violence and addiction, and at an early age Tana began a life of crime. He was arrested when he was nine for auto theft and progressed from running errands for street dealers to selling drugs himself. Before long, his record included multiple homicides, including, in 2013, that of a stranger, Alfonzo Williams, who had simply asked to speak to Williams’s sister. Tana’s fearsome reputation kept witnesses to his killings silent, but eventually he became the target of a federal task force and in 2019 was sentenced to life in prison for racketeering and drug conspiracy charges, including murders and witness intimidation. Bowden pulls no punches in his indictment of the ways in which the richest country in the world has allowed Black children for decades to be born into blighted urban neighborhoods, and saddled them with burdens that they must struggle to surmount to lead meaningful lives. This account of “young men growing up in a place where murderous violence has become a way of life” will haunt readers long after they finish it. Admirers of The Wire will be riveted. (Apr.)