Hotel Scarface

2017 | Biography

Miami, December 31, 1979. Lock your doors. Watch your backs. Raise your glasses. Miami is about to blow, in a fiery explosion of cocaine, blood, bullets, torched cars, cash, immigrants, hustlers, dopers, informants, corruption, body bags and inner tubes. Behind the bar at the Hotel Mutiny, the hottest ticket in town as the clock approached 1980, waitresses and bellhops were stacking whiskey totes full of the white stuff. The tips - pure cocaine packed in hundred-dollar bills - were sluicing in. Everyone was trying to bribe their way to a coveted New Year's Eve table at the hotel's swanky, members-only Club, desperate to sit among a guest list that included Liza Minnelli, Ted Kennedy, Julio Iglesias, Burt Reynolds, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Doobie Brothers and the Eagles. And America's biggest cocaine kingpins. Welcome to Hotel Scarface.

Roben Farzad's vividly reported, wildly entertaining account of Miami's pre-South Beach heyday tells the true story of the city's violent cocaine trade and of the infamous establishment at its epicentre, the Hotel Mutiny, which Farzad describes as "an ecosystem for drug traffickers, law enforcement, celebs, spooks, refugees, parvenus, informers, and scammers, playing host to a drama of murder, corruption, betrayal, and licentiousness." Having travelled the globe to locate his hometown's most infamous kingpins, negotiate full access and tease out their stories, Farzad is uniquely placed to tell the tale of how waves of Cuban immigrants pursued their dystopian American dream of controlling Miami's cocaine underworld, a conspiracy that was plotted in the members-only discotheque of the city's hottest hotel. Immortalised in the blockbuster movie Scarface, the story of Miami's cocaine trade is steeped in popular legend, and from Miami Vice to Grand Theft Auto to the hit series Breaking Bad the fascination with 1970s-1980s Miami noir endures across the world. But the real-life criminals who inspired the legend have largely shunned attention - until now.

Farzad's Hotel Scarface will become the book of record on this surreal time and place.

Roben Farzad (Author)