American Desperado: My Life--From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset

The true story of super-criminal Jon Roberts, star of the documentary Cocaine Cowboys. 
 
American Desperado is Roberts’ no-holds-barred account of being born into Mafia royalty, witnessing his first murder at the age of seven, becoming a hunter-assassin in Vietnam, returning to New York to become--at age 22--one of the city’s leading nightclub impresarios, then journeying to Miami where in a few short years he would rise to become the Medellin Cartel’s most effective smuggler.
 
But that’s just half the tale. 
 
The roster of Roberts’ friends and acquaintances reads like a Who’s Who of the latter half of the 20th century and includes everyone from Jimi Hendrix, Richard Pryor, and O.J. Simpson to Carlo Gambino, Meyer Lansky, and Manuel Noriega.
 
Nothing if not colorful, Roberts surrounded himself with beautiful women, drove his souped-up street car at a top speed of 180 miles per hour, shared his bed with a 200-pound cougar, and employed a 6”6” professional wrestler called “The Thing” as his bodyguard.  Ultimately, Roberts became so powerful that he attracted the attention of the Republican Party’s leadership, was wooed by them, and even was co-opted by the CIA for which he carried out its secret agenda.
 
Scrupulously documented and relentlessly propulsive, this collaboration between a bloodhound journalist and one of the most audacious criminals ever is like no other crime book you’ve ever read.

• American Made: Who Killed Barry Seal? Pablo Escobar or George Hw Bush (War on Drugs)
• Smuggler's Blues: A True Story of the Hippie Mafia
• Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami
• BLOW: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellín Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All
• The Man Who Made It Snow
• Pablo Escobar: Beyond Narcos
• The Cali Cartel: Beyond Narcos (War on Drugs)
• Doctor Dealer: The Rise and Fall of an All-American Boy and His Multimillion-Dollar Cocaine Empire
• Prisoner of War: The Story of White Boy Rick and the War on Drugs
• Buccaneer: The Provocative Odyssey of Jack Reed, Adventurer, Drug Smuggler and Pilot Extraordinaire