Australia didn’t have a drug problem until the Nugan Hand merchant bank – with its shadowy tentacles to the CIA – opened in Sydney in the 1970s, financing heroin trafficking through money laundering on a mammoth scale. Its intricate chessboard of crime had two grandmasters: Michael Hand, a mysterious former Green Beret, and Bernie Houghton, a gregarious wheeler-dealer who was also a product of the US secret intelligence network.

In this novel, Heavy Allies, award-winning Australian author Wayne Grogan worms inside Nugan Hand to tell American readers the almost unknown story of how the United States inflicted a heroin plague on its closest ally, with ruthless military precision.

“I was just blown away by the quality and power of the writing – he’s a real poet. When he dramatises scenes they truly fly off the page. The language of the crims and cops is spot on. It’s beautifully researched, like a history of Sydney crime in the 70s and 80s.  Sincere congratulations to Wayne Grogan. It’s a huge work.” – Gabrielle Carey