Beyond Suspicion

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The newsstand had a half-dozen Russian language newspapers to choose from, and I wasn’t in Moscow. I was in Hollywood, Florida, a typical suburban community north of Miami. Naturally, I had to ask: What gives?

It turns out that south Florida – known for its ethnic diversity, though usually with a Latin beat – has a sizeable Russian population. The vast majority are law-abiding, good people. But there’s a dark side, too. Take Tarzan, for instance. No, not Johnny Weismüller. This Tarzan is a legendary, muscle-bound Russian mobster famous for the drug and sex orgies on his boat off Miami Beach. He’s now even more famous (not to mention incarcerated) for a serious but unsuccessful scheme to buy a nuclear submarine from a former Soviet naval officer and then use it to smuggle cocaine from Colombia.

Miami has a new criminal powerhouse knocking at its gates. Brighton Beach, New York is the only place in America with more Russian mobsters – the Mafiya, as it’s called. Thankfully, the Mafiya is nowhere near as well organized as La Cosa Nostra, but they are definitely here and growing stronger. With a little help from my law enforcement contacts, I was able to find a Ukrainian-born undercover agent who was willing to tell me all about it. One meeting with him, and I knew: There had to be a novel in this.

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