The Book
Cuban exile turned CIA operative Ricardo “Monkey” Morales justifies his moniker by orchestrating decades of chaos in the world of international espionage.
The legend of Cuban exile turned US government operative Ricardo Morales Navarrete has been known in espionage circles for decades. Dubbed “The Monkey” for his disruptive and unpredictable escapades, Morales grabbed headlines for decades as tales of his bombings, arrests, assassination attempts (both those he executed and those he suffered), and testimony constructed a real-life spy adventure unlike anything brought to page or screen.
Monkey Morales blends James Bond, Rambo, and Scarface—a concoction of danger, politics, and family drama told in its entirety for the first time by authors Sean Oliver and Morales’s son, Ricardo Morales, Jr.
Word on the Street
“A riveting and illuminating deep dive into the anti-Castro movement in the U.S. ... Monkey Morales was the proverbial man without a country, and his willingness to use any means necessary to achieve his goals (including bombings, murder and other terrorist acts) makes for an outrageously entertaining saga of counter-revolutionary hubris gone horribly wrong.”
— T.J. English, New York Times best-selling author of The Last Kilo, The Corporation and Havana Nocturne
"John le Carré and Ian Fleming together could not have invented a more compelling real life spook than what is found here in the pages of this definitive biography of the legendary Ricardo ‘Monkey’ Morales. His most closely guarded secrets and undercover exploits in espionage all are revealed here for the first time, finally providing the missing puzzle pieces that help resolve some of the biggest historical jigsaws of 20th century spy craft.”
— Fernand Amandi, MSNBC analyst
“Anyone who knows anything about Miami’s mythic webs of intrigue knows Monkey Morales lay at the heart of them all. Finally, a pacy biography that sorts fact from fiction—and needless to say the facts are much, much stranger than the tallest of tales.”
— Nicholas Griffin, author of The Year of Dangerous Days: Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in Miami 1980
“I’ve been trying to understand Ricardo Monkey Morales for thirty years. He left us all these clues—in police records, on the lips of exiles, across international press, in hours of surreal testimony. Fact. Fiction. Hyperbole. Heartbreak. You could never quite put his story down. Finally, Rick, Jr. and Sean Oliver connect it all for me. This book—decades overdue—is a gift.”
— Roben Farzad, author of Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami, CNN, NPR Radio
“The authors have done a masterful job putting all these elements together so cogently; I don’t know how anyone could’ve done it, but they’ve certainly done the job. I can’t say enough how impressed I am. Masterful job, just outstanding, masterful…over and over.”
— Jerome Sanford, former Assistant US Attorney
Order
MONKEY MORALES is available at these outlets:
