The much anticipated follow-up to the bestseller that exposed the escalation of organised crime in New Zealand.
Gangster's Paradise is about drugs, guns, gangs and money. Lots of money.
A gang which took over a small rural town. A police officer shot and killed in a routine traffic stop. A port-worker who helped a gang whisk a shipping container off a wharf in the middle of the night. A crew of corrupt baggage handlers smuggling meth into the country during Covid lockdowns. A shooting inside a 5-star hotel in broad daylight. Turf wars, retaliation, and retribution: new gangs like the Mongols and Comancheros have brought with them better connections with international syndicates, challenging the established gangs like the Head Hunters - so dominant for many years - who have had to up their game in response.
Jared Savage's bestselling book Gangland was about the evolution of gangs in New Zealand. Gangster's Paradise is about the deadly escalation.
New Zealand's underworld of organised crime and deadly gangs
'The best true-crime book of the year by a long stretch.'
- Steve Braunias, Newsroom
'A series of rip-snorting yarns about gangs, drugs, fancy cars, wads of cash, violence, and guns - Aotearoa New Zealand style.'
- Simon Bridges
New Zealand is now one of the most lucrative illicit drug markets in the world. Organised crime is about making money. It's a business. But over the past 20 years, the dealers have graduated from motorcycle gangs to Asian crime syndicates and now the most dangerous drug lords in the world - the Mexican cartels.
In Gangland, award-winning investigative reporter Jared Savage shines a light into New Zealand's rising underworld of organised crime and violent gangs.
The brutal execution of a husband-and-wife; the undercover cop who infiltrated a casino VIP lounge; the midnight fishing trip which led to the country's biggest cocaine bust; the gangster who shot his best friend in a motorcycle shop: these stories go behind the headlines and open the door to an invisible world - a world where millions of dollars are made, life is cheap, and allegiances change like the flick of a switch.