Heavy Allies is a fictionalised account of the rise and demise of Nugan Hand. Wayne Grogan utilises two fictional characters: Michael Byrne, a young Australian intelligence officer who falls in with Green Beret and future bank director Michael Hand while serving in Vietnam; and Frank Matthias, a crooked cop and Nugan Hand hitman. Maria, a third fictional or ‘composite’ character, provides a street-level view of Nugan Hand’s impact as she is gradually, ineluctably snared in the burgeoning Sydney drug scene.

The turpitude depicted in Heavy Allies is vertiginous, yet the novel itself is intimate, concerned with the fine grain of individual experience. Grogan forsakes the panoramic sweep of true crime epics in favour of deft character sketches. Matthias, whose story is told in a hard-bitten first person that sits nicely alongside the seedy poetry of Grogan’s third-person narration, is especially well rendered. In (deliberate?) contrast, the real-life characters come across as figures in a newspaper report: two-dimensional avatars of corruption and greed.

The use of a shifting viewpoint and non-linear plot allows for a steady accretion of detail that is evocative without overwhelming the narrative. Grogan’s prose is pitch perfect, and his control of the material, factual or otherwise, is total. Heavy Allies is an assured performance at almost every level.