Wiseguy Capers, Zig-Zag Minds

Abstract

Michael L. Shuman reviews Richard Stratton’s Smuggler’s Blues: A True Story of the Hippie Mafia (Arcade), a memoir of the author’s drug-smuggling career in the 1970s and early 1980s. Shuman follows Stratton’s tough-guy confrontations with mobsters and DEA agents, his paranoia about his associates, and his lavish use of period pop culture. He gives particular attention to Stratton’s friendship with Norman Mailer, whose name remained on the lease of a Maine farm later used as a landing strip, and to Stratton’s warning to Mailer about Jack Henry Abbott. Shuman judges the book an exhilarating, nostalgic thriller rather than a source of wisdom, while crediting Stratton’s acceptance of responsibility for his crimes.