FOR THE AVERAGE American, the phrase “Florida drug kingpin” is more likely to evoke cocaineslinging Cubans or meth-cooking bikers than a middle-aged science-fiction nerd who invited the police to inspect his facilities. Yet in the eyes of federal prosecutors, Charles Burton Ritchie was no less a kingpin—just smarter and less violent than the folks they were used to dealing with.
The story of Ritchie’s rise and fall, as told by Jordan S. Rubin in Bizarro: The Surreal Saga of America’s Secret War on Synthetic Drugs and the Florida Kingpins It Captured, is every bit as compelling as a more Scarfacian tale. Rubin, a former narcotics prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, has written a period-defining study of federal drug prosecutions at the beginning of the synthetics boom.
Our Dantes are Ritchie
