Böcker av Richard Stratton

This fast-paced sequel to Smuggler's Blues is a harrowing and at times comical journey through the criminal justice system at the height of America's War on Plants.Captured in the lobby of the Sheraton Senator Hotel at LAX following a fifteen-year run smuggling marijuana and hashish as part of the hippie mafia, Richard Stratton began a new journey. Kingpin tells the story of the eight years that followed, through two federal trials and the underworld of the federal prison system, at a time when it was undergoing unprecedented expansion due to the War on Drugs. Stratton was shipped by bus from LA's notorious Glass House to jails and prisons across the country, a softening process known as diesel therapy. Resisting pressure to falsely implicate his friend and mentor, Norman Mailer, he was convicted in his second trial under the kingpin statute and sentenced to twenty-five years without the possibility of parole.While doing time in prisons from Manhattan's Criminal Hilton to rural Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and New York, he witnessed brutality as well as camaraderie, rampant trafficking of contraband, and crimes by both guards and convicts. He first learned the lessons of survival. Then he learned to prevail, becoming a jailhouse lawyer and winning the reversal of his kingpin sentence and eventual release.Kingpin includes cameos by Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, and John Gotti, and an account of the author's friendship with mafia don Joe Stassi, a legendary hitman from the early days of the mob who knew gangsters Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Abe Zwillman and has insights into the killing of Dutch Schultz and the Kennedy assassination.Kingpin is the second volume in Richard Stratton's trilogy, Remembrance of the War on Plants.

Goodfellas meets Savages meets Catch Me If You Can in this true tale of high-stakes smuggling from pot's outlaw years.Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut kid from an old New England family who entered outlaw culture on a trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He became a member of the Hippie Mafia, traveling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo. With cameos by Whitey Bulger and Norman Mailer, Smuggler''s Blues tells Stratton''s adventure while centering on his last years as he travels from New York to Lebanon''s Bekaa Valley to source and smuggle high-grade hash in the midst of civil war, from the Caribbean to the backwoods of Maine, and from the Chelsea Hotel to the Plaza as his fortunes rise and fall. All the while he is being pursued by his nemesis, a philosophical DEA agent who respects him for his good business practices. A true-crime story that reads like fiction, Smuggler''s Blues is a psychedelic road trip through international drug smuggling, the hippie underground, and the war on weed. As Big Marijuana emerges, it brings to vivid life an important chapter in pot''s cultural history.

This gripping and trippy true account of international drug smuggling, the hippie underground, and the war on marijuana is a ';wild, entertaining ride' (Kirkus Reviews). Richard Stratton was not what most people would think as a drug kingpin. He was a clean-cut young man from Wellesley who came from a normal, middle-class family. That all changed when, on a trip to Mexico, his search for a joint led to him smuggling two kilos of dope across the border in his car door. And with that successful deal, Stratton became a member of what came to be known as the Hippie Mafia. He was a new breed of criminal: travelling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, and rejecting hard drugs in favor of marijuana and hashish. His adventures sent him from New York's Plaza Hotel to Lebanon's war-torn Bekaa Valley and beyond, sourcing and smuggling high-grade hash and coming face to face with celebrities like Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Norman Mailer, as well as cold-blooded killers like the infamous mob boss Whitey Bulger. All the while, Stratton was tailed by his relentless nemesisa philosophical DEA agent who actually respected Stratton for his good business practices. A true-crime story that reads like fiction, Smuggler's Blues brings to vivid life an important chapter in pot's cultural history, and is sure to ';get under your skin, enter your blood stream, and mess with your head' (T.J. English, New York Timesbestselling author of The Savage City).

Goodfellas meets Catch Me If You Can in this true tale of high-stakes smuggling from pot's outlaw years.