Rig Lopez-Campbell is a middle-schooler navigating the streets of Liberty City following his father’s imprisonment. Tommy Munoz is a Pedro Pan survivor and former accountant dragged into the violent world of cocaine trafficking. Tina Pacheco is a freelance photo-journalist who captured images of the Dadeland Mall Massacre. Ralph Williams is a homicide detective tasked with stemming the tide of carnage in the face of growing corruption within his own department.
Touring Magic City during the height of the Cocaine Cowboy era, Riders in Disguise takes a broad look at the most influential and violent period in South Florida’s history.
Praise for Riders In Disguise
“Brilliant and scathing…Anderson Jr. delivers a smart, vibrant, unforgettable knockout…Riders in Disguise recalls The Wire in its piercing panoramic examination of the cruel forces that conspire to unravel our communities but also the front-line courage and resilience that holds them together.”
Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of This Is How You Lose Her
“Miami in the 1980s became a war zone. A 1979 shootout at Dadeland Mall is often considered the opening salvo in a long, violent clash between drug traffickers and law enforcement officers that also embroiled innocent, ordinary people. Patrick Anderson views the conflict from all perspectives, describing crime, violence, and small acts of defiance and survival with precision and grace. The story is punctuated by newspaper headlines that add historical and cultural context. Compelling from the first page, Riders in Disguise perfectly captures the contradictions that beset Miami, a city both blessed and cursed by its diversity and its fearlessness.”
Susan Hubbard, author of The Society of S Trilogy
“In this terrifying and stunning debut, Patrick Anderson shines a prismatic light on Miami’s violent past. Through that prism, we sense the momentum in the reflecting light of trauma. We see how the force of the gunshots from another time overflows and floods us now, here where each of us stands, and everywhere.”
Darlin Neal, author of Rattlesnakes & The Moon and Elegant Punk
Patrick Anderson Jr. | Autonomous Entity 