Among the Bros by Max Marshall Review: Southern Charm, Xanax & Fraternity Chaos ⭐ 3.5/5
I’m from the South. I’ve watched more seasons of Southern Charm than I’d probably admit under oath. So tell me there’s a nonfiction book about a massive drug ring involving fraternity brothers at the College of Charleston, and obviously I’m going to read it. 😂
Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall takes us inside a world of wealthy college kids, fraternity hazing, fake IDs, mountains of Xanax, astonishing amounts of privilege, and eventually, murder.
And there is a LOT here.
At times, Among the Bros is fascinating and genuinely eye-opening. At other times, it is repetitive, unnecessarily drawn out, and so determined to make sure I understand what I just read that I started wondering whether Marshall thought I had wandered away from the book between paragraphs.
Still, was I entertained?
Absolutely. 🍿
My Rating: ⭐ 3.5/5
⚠️ Trigger Warnings for Among the Bros
Drug addiction and abuse • overdose • murder • gun violence • alcohol abuse • hazing • racism • sexual assault • misogyny • suicide references • bodily fluids • physical violence • death
📚 Among the Bros Review: Welcome to Charleston
Part of what immediately drew me to Among the Bros was the setting.
The College of Charleston sits right in the middle of one of the most beautiful cities in the South, and if your primary exposure to Charleston has been Bravo television, historic homes, fabulous restaurants, and people arguing at dinner parties while wearing extremely expensive loafers, this book offers a considerably darker tour. 😂
Marshall focuses largely on Mikey Schmidt, who arrives at the College of Charleston in 2013 and eventually becomes involved in an enormous drug operation centered around Xanax.
Mikey already knows how to sell marijuana before he gets to college. Once he enters Charleston's fraternity scene, however, he finds an environment almost perfectly designed for his particular entrepreneurial talents.
Unfortunately, those talents involve illegal pharmaceuticals.
He becomes friends with Rob Liljeberg III, joins Kappa Alpha Order, and discovers a culture where drinking, drugs, hazing, money, connections, and an almost supernatural confidence that consequences are for other people all coexist quite comfortably.
And Among the Bros isn't simply about Mikey.
Marshall uses his story to examine the broader history and culture of American fraternities, particularly the ways wealth, race, masculinity, privilege, hazing, and drugs have become tangled together.
This is where the book is at its strongest.
It's also occasionally where it made me want to yell, "YES, MAX, I REMEMBER. YOU TOLD ME." 😆
💊 A Juicy, Disturbing Look at Fraternity Culture
There is no shortage of shocking material in this book.
The hazing stories alone are insane.
Pledges endure forced binge drinking, sleep deprivation, humiliation, physical abuse, and increasingly dangerous initiation rituals. Marshall describes a culture in which behavior that would be horrifying almost anywhere else becomes normalized simply because everyone around you is participating in it.
Then there are the drugs.
Xanax mixed with alcohol becomes practically its own character in this story. Students consume staggering quantities of pills, sometimes intentionally combining them with alcohol and other drugs until entire nights disappear from memory.
Meanwhile, Mikey's little college drug operation isn't little for long.
The amount of Xanax moving through this group eventually becomes absolutely staggering.
And perhaps the most fascinating part is how normal everyone seems to find it.
Nobody appears to wake up one morning and announce, "Guys, I think our fraternity may have accidentally become a pharmaceutical distribution network."
They just...keep going. 😳
🤨 My Biggest Problem With Among the Bros
My biggest complaint is that this book needed a tighter edit.
Marshall has an incredibly compelling story. He has murder. Drugs. Money. Southern fraternity culture. Racism. Privilege. Police investigations. The dark web. Wealthy families. Informants.
He does not need to convince me to keep reading.
And yet the book can be slow and repetitive, circling back to ideas we've already covered and explaining things that really don't require another explanation.
There is also quite a bit of reader hand-holding. Occasionally Marshall explains a connection, cultural reference, or implication that felt fairly obvious, and then explains it a little more just in case.
I promise, we're keeping up! 😂
I was also somewhat uncomfortable with the way the book portrays its wealthy fraternity brothers. Marshall certainly criticizes the system that protects them, but at times there is almost a fascination with their wealth, status, connections, and lifestyle that starts feeling a little too close to glorification.
That's particularly noticeable considering how differently consequences ultimately fall on the people involved.
The privilege is supposed to be part of the story—and it absolutely should be—but sometimes I wasn't entirely sure whether the book was exposing that privilege or just a little dazzled by it.
🚨 Among the Bros Full Plot Summary & Ending Explained
⚠️ MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
Everything below discusses the entire book, including the murder, arrests, convictions, and ending. Stop here if you don't want spoilers!
🎓 Mikey Schmidt Enters the College of Charleston Fraternity World
The central figure in Among the Bros is Mikey Schmidt, who arrives at the College of Charleston in 2013 already experienced in selling marijuana.
Charleston has a thriving fraternity scene, and Mikey quickly becomes friends with Rob Liljeberg III, a member of Kappa Alpha Order (KA). Mikey proves useful by supplying high-quality fake IDs, a particularly valuable commodity among underage students whose social lives revolve heavily around bars, alcohol, and parties.
Mikey eventually pledges KA and enters its hazing culture. Marshall places his experiences within a much larger examination of American fraternities, where officially prohibited hazing nevertheless continues through forced drinking, sleep deprivation, physical punishment, humiliating errands, and dangerous rituals.
Marshall also examines the history of racism within fraternity culture and KA's particular connection to the mythology of the Confederate South.
Meanwhile, Xanax is becoming enormously popular as a recreational drug.
Students combine benzodiazepines with alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine, frequently experiencing blackouts and complete memory loss. Marshall describes parties where Xanax is mixed directly into communal drinks, creating situations in which people may have little or no recollection of what happened afterward.
💊 Mikey and Rob Build a Xanax Empire
Mikey begins selling Xanax and increasingly stops behaving like a college student at all.
He quits attending classes and eventually flunks out after his first year, returning to Atlanta, where he works as a valet and develops connections in the music and drug scenes.
But leaving Charleston doesn't end his partnership with Rob.
Instead, their operation grows.
Mikey and Rob obtain Xanax through various suppliers, including pills purchased through the dark web, and distribute enormous quantities to smaller dealers around Charleston. Those dealers then resell the pills at a markup.
The system becomes increasingly profitable.
They expand into cocaine, with Mikey obtaining supplies through an Atlanta connection he calls "Uncle."
Another important player is Zack Kligman, who becomes a major Xanax supplier. Rather than relying exclusively on legitimate pharmaceutical pills, Zack and his associates begin manufacturing counterfeit Xanax themselves using a pill press.
The result is an enormous underground supply chain stretching far beyond a few college students selling pills at parties.
🔫 The Murder of Patrick Moffly
The story takes a much darker turn with Patrick Moffly.
Patrick has a history of benzodiazepine misuse and has struggled for years with drugs. He eventually moves to Charleston and becomes involved in selling Xanax obtained through Zack.
On March 4, 2016, Patrick is shot and killed in his Charleston home.
His murder transforms what might otherwise have remained a story about a spectacular college drug bust into something much more disturbing.
The investigation begins exposing the size of the drug network operating around Charleston.
Police eventually catch both Rob Liljeberg and Zack Kligman in a sting operation. Facing serious consequences themselves, both cooperate with law enforcement and become informants.
Their cooperation leads investigators toward Mikey.
🚔 The Drug Ring Collapses
Mikey is eventually arrested and accepts a plea deal resulting in a 10-year prison sentence.
Investigators uncover evidence demonstrating just how enormous the operation had become, including millions of Xanax pills connected to Zack's operation.
Yet one of the most striking aspects of the aftermath is how unevenly punishment is distributed.
Many of the young men involved in the drug operation receive relatively limited prison time—or avoid significant incarceration altogether—despite the scale of the trafficking.
And then there is Charles Mungin.
Charles, a young Black man, is arrested and convicted of murdering Patrick Moffly. He receives a life sentence.
Marshall raises questions surrounding the circumstances of Patrick's murder and explores the possibility that Charles may have been acting at the direction of Zack Kligman, although the book does not definitively establish that theory as fact.
That uncertainty becomes one of the book's most unsettling elements.
⚖️ How Among the Bros Ends
By the end of Among the Bros, the fraternity world surrounding the case has been shaken—but certainly not destroyed.
Kappa Alpha temporarily shuts down its College of Charleston chapter, and nationally, fraternities face increasing scrutiny over hazing, sexual violence, racism, drug use, and student deaths.
But fraternity culture survives.
Many of the privileged young men caught up in the drug network eventually have the opportunity to move forward with their lives.
Mikey's sentence is substantial, but others involved receive considerably lighter consequences. Rob and Zack's cooperation with authorities helps reduce their exposure, while Charles Mungin receives life in prison for Patrick's murder.
And that contrast is ultimately one of Marshall's central points.
This isn't merely a story about some fraternity brothers who started selling drugs and got in way over their heads. It's about who gets protected, who gets second chances, and who pays the highest price when a privileged world finally collides with the criminal justice system.
There isn't a neat ending because the culture Marshall is writing about doesn't neatly end.
The drug ring falls apart.
Patrick Moffly is dead.
People go to prison.
And fraternity life carries on.
🧐 Privilege Is the Real Story Here
This was probably the aspect of Among the Bros that stayed with me the most.
Yes, the drug trafficking is fascinating. Yes, the scale of the operation is shocking. And yes, the fraternity stories provide plenty of moments where you wonder how any of these people survived college.
But underneath all of it is privilege.
Money buys lawyers.
Connections provide options.
Families provide safety nets.
Bad decisions that might permanently destroy one person's future can become an unfortunate youthful chapter in somebody else's life.
Marshall does a good job showing that disparity, even if—as I mentioned earlier—I occasionally thought his fascination with the wealthy fraternity world undermined his criticism of it.
Still, the contrast in outcomes is difficult to ignore.
😂 Fascinating Story, Frustrating Execution
This is one of those books where I liked the story more than the storytelling.
Give me a tighter version of Among the Bros, cut some of the repetition, trust me to remember information from 20 pages ago, and I probably would have rated it higher.
Because the material itself?
Wild.
I went into this because College of Charleston + fraternity scandal + Southern true crime sounded irresistible, and on that front, the book delivered.
It is juicy. It is disturbing. It is occasionally unbelievable. And every time I thought the operation couldn't possibly get much bigger, someone apparently located another warehouse-sized quantity of Xanax. 😳💊
⭐ Final Verdict: Is Among the Bros Worth Reading?
Yes—with some patience.
⭐ 3.5/5
Among the Bros is an engaging and eye-opening nonfiction crime story about drugs, fraternity culture, privilege, race, and the strange ecosystem that allowed a group of young men to build an enormous drug operation in and around a college campus.
I wish Marshall had trusted the story more.
The repetition slows down what should have been a propulsive read, and the occasional hand-holding became frustrating. I also never completely shook the feeling that the book was a little too enamored with some of the wealthy, privileged men whose behavior it was supposedly examining.
But despite those complaints, I kept reading.
And for someone who has spent years watching Southern Charm, there was something especially surreal about reading such a dark story unfolding against familiar Charleston streets and that picture-perfect Southern backdrop.
Turns out Charleston has more going on than pastel houses, fabulous restaurants, and Bravo drama.
Apparently there were also millions of Xanax pills.
Good Lord. 😳
📚 What to Read After Among the Bros
If the combination of true crime, privilege, college culture, drugs, and institutional failure grabbed you, try:
The Hunting Ground: The Inside Story of Sexual Assault on American College Campuses by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering — A disturbing examination of sexual assault and institutional responses on American campuses.
We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper — A meticulously researched true-crime investigation centered on a murder at Harvard and the stories that developed around it.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt — Fiction rather than true crime, but if wealthy college students making increasingly terrible decisions is your thing...well, welcome. 😂
The Most Dangerous Animal of All by Gary L. Stewart and Susan Mustafa — A true-crime investigation built around obsession, family history, and the search for answers.
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer — A much broader work of narrative nonfiction, but a great choice for readers who like true crime that also digs deeply into the culture surrounding the crime.
Bottom line: Among the Bros could have been shorter, sharper, and less repetitive, but the story underneath all that excess is fascinating enough to keep the pages turning.
Final Rating: ⭐ 3.5/5
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