The inside story of a band of entrepreneurial upstarts who made millions selling painkillers - until their scheme unravelled, placing them at the centre of a landmark criminal trial.

Now a major film streaming on NETFLIX

‘I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. A tour de force.’ – Patrick Radden Keefe, award-winning author of Empire of Pain
'Everyone should read this book' - Sheelagh Kolhatkar, author of Black Edge

John Kapoor had already made a small fortune in pharmaceuticals when he developed a highly potent fentanyl-based painkiller that was as addictive as it was effective. Desperate to make the most of his new drug, he brought together an ambitious, persuasive and relentless group of young recruits who were willing to do anything to profit from this seemingly life-chanigng medicine.

This is the inside story of hustlers turned millionaires and a shocking exposé of how opioids entered the national bloodstream.

'A fast-paced and maddening account' - The New York Times Book Review

Previously published as The Hard Sell

"'A fast-paced and maddening account . . . What’s most surprising and powerful about The Hard Sell is not one company’s criminality . . . as much as how institutionalized these practices were across the modern drug industry.'" - New York Times Book Review

"A pacey crime caper set against the backdrop of the opioid crisis . . . When I tell you that reading “The Hard Sell” is like watching a Scorsese film, you will assume I am exaggerating. Pick it up and tell me I’m wrong" - The New York Times

"Vivid . . . [An] insightful account of how a company that went public in the most successful IPO of 2013 soon ended up a poster child for corporate greed" - The Boston Globe

"Does the world really need another book about the opioid crisis? . . . The Hard Sell by Evan Hughes proves a worthy addition to the collection." - The Washington Post