1
of
1
Operation Playboy
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still
learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Summary
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$3999
Unit price
/
Unavailable
AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER
Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 4-6 weeks
Found a better price? Request a price match
Operation Playboy
$3999
Unit price
/
Unavailable
Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
Ideal for readers who enjoy true crime, organised crime thrillers, drug bust stories, and biographies of real police investigations. Fans of authors like Rusty Young, James Phelps, and stories akin to Underbelly will find this book especially compelling.
Latest News
Books Our Dads Gave Us
For Father’s Day, we asked some of the team to share the books their Dads...
Romance for Spring - Groundbreaking!
Lizzy is sharing her top picks for Spring reads in the romance and romantasy genre...
The ‘Fourth Wing’ graphic novel covers have been revealed
The covers for ‘Fourth Wing, The Graphic Novel: Volume One’ have officially been revealed, with...
Books about Bookshops (across almost every genre)
Books about books, bookshops, and booksellers - it's my favourite thing. Here's a small selection...
What the Book Hero team is excited for
With so many pre-orders coming in the last few months of the year, we asked...
See moreAn exhilarating true-crime thriller revealing the exploits of the world's most audacious drug mules and dealers.
An exhilarating true-crime thriller revealing the exploits of the world's most audacious drug mules and dealers.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
From the acclaimed author of true crime bestsellers Hotel Kerobokan and Snowing in Bali: Kathryn Bonella.
Sex. Drugs. Danger. Death.
This is the adrenaline-pumping, true crime story of the world's most audacious drug runners and the true life police hunt, Operation Playboy, to track them down.
These drug-running criminals travel the globe: they ski in Europe, surf in Bali, hook up with celebrity models and live in five-star hotels. They are 24/7 party boys with brass balls, steely nerves and reckless ambitions. They pay for their high-risk, hedonistic lifestyle by trafficking cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana on international flights and through the world's biggest airports.
But to ride the wave you have to roll the dice. And in this game, a bust means prison - or even a firing squad. A Brazilian cop is watching closely, determined to close the net. With a small team, he battles corrupt colleagues and bent judges to learn the secrets of the criminal playboys' gang and bring about their downfall.
If you love true crime or organised crime thrillers, drug bust stories, espionage, murder and mayhem, mafia films, international mystery and crime, heists and biographies featuring a real police operation and a real criminal gang, then this is the true crime biography for you... a page-turning, white-knuckle thriller - the true story of a mafia-style manhunt codenamed Operation Playboy.
Perfect for fans of true crime stories and authors like Rusty Young, James Phelps, Chopper Read and Underbelly.
True Crime | Mafia | Organised Crime | Hoaxes & Deceptions | Murder & Mayhem
Available at all etailers and in audiobook.
Grab Your Copy NOW...
Praise for Kathryn Bonella
"[A] graphic insight into the hidden world of Bali's top western criminal cocaine bosses... With unprecedented access into their lives author Kathryn Bonella charts their rise to incredible wealth and power... [and] also follows many to the depths of hell when they are busted." - Tracks on Snowing in Bali
"...an insightful and sharply observed account of life inside Indonesia's most notorious prison. Bonella casts a cool journalistic eye over some horrific true life events..." - Sun Herald on Hotel Kerobokan
"Bonella's portrayal of the jail... will make readers flinch with its graphic descriptions of violence and debauchery taking place under the eyes of bent guards." - South China Morning Post on Hotel Kerobokan
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781743533321
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 12 December 2017
Country: Australia
Imprint: Macmillan Australia
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 33.0mm
Width: 156.0mm
Height: 235.0mm
Weight: 527g
Pages: 418
About the Author
With her bestselling books making a splash internationally, Kathryn Bonella, bestselling writer of true crime kindle, paperback and audible books, has established a global fan base. Her true crime books focussing on Bali, drug smuggling, surfing and Brazil have become compulsory reading for many surfers and travellers, especially those who travel to Bali and Brazil. Kathryn studied as a journalist at RMIT in Melbourne, moved to London to freelance for print and TV, then returned to Australia in 2000 to produce for 60 Minutes. It was a true crime story about a 27-year-old Australian beauty school student, Schapelle Corby, being arrested at Bali international airport with kilos of marijuana in her boogie-board bag that spring-boarded Kathryn from journalist to bestselling organised crime author. After covering the story for 60 Minutes, Kathryn was offered the chance to co-write Schapelle's autobiography, Schapelle Corby: My Story, with Schapelle. It went straight to number one. Since then Kathryn has written three more international true crime bestsellers: Hotel Kerobokan, internationally titled Hotel K, which blew the lid off the notorious Bali jail; Snowing in Bali, a true life crime thriller about the island's cocaine dealers; and Operation Playboy, the adrenaline-pumping true crime story of surfers trafficking drugs across the globe and the international police chase for the organised crime gang. In 2019, Kathryn and Schapelle updated My Story, 13 years after releasing the original. If you are a fan of true crime biography books, mafia books, organised crime books, books about hoaxes, deceptions and murder and mayhem then these brilliant, bestselling books are for YOU!
Also by Kathryn Bonella
View all-
Hotel Kerobokan
Welcome to Hotel Kerobokan, the ironic name given to Bali's most notorious jail by its inmates. It's a bizarre nether world where murderers sleep alongside petty thieves, drug and alcohol addiction is rife, guards are corrupt and money talks. Into this hellhole have passed a procession of the infamous and the tragic: the Bali bombers, Gold Coast beautician Schapelle Corby,...Paperback$2499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Snowing in Bali
From the internationally bestselling author of Hotel Kerobokan and co-author of Schapelle Corby's autobiography, this is the incredible inside account of Bali's hidden drug world. "A unique, uncensored insight into a hidden world." — The Chronicle It's snowing in Bali. Among Bali's drug dealers, it's the code for a huge cocaine shipment having just landed. For the men who run...Paperback$2699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
More from Crime & Thriller
View all-
New ReleaseDying Days
Award-winning writer delivers a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. Missing soldiers, MI6 secrets and European partisans collide in a deadly game where the lines between lies and reality are fast disintegrating. In the dying days of the Second World War, a new conflict is about to ignite. May, 1945: After fighting to liberate Europe from the Nazis, Tito's Yugoslav Army and Allied...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3699Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Buy to WinNew ReleaseThe Country Road Murders
From the Sunday Times bestselling author comes a pulse-pounding thriller about justice, vengeance and the roads that lead us home. No one gets this big without amazing natural storytelling talent - which is what Jim has, in spades — LEE CHILD Cross Rivers is the kind of small town where everyone knows your name – and your secrets. Silas Tucker...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseEvery Lake
Scary stories are fun... until your life becomes one. When Alice was fifteen, her father killed Mia Heywood in their lakefront cottage before vanishing into the trees. At least that's what the locals think happened. Over a decade later, Alice has lost her job as a journalist, she's going through an expensive divorce and she desperately needs to sell the...Paperback$3299Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New Release
Nautilus
The follow-up to the bestselling novel The Turing Protocol. Nautilus is a machine with the astonishing power to send messages eight weeks back in time. Its users must follow a set of protocols established by its inventor, Alan Turing, including that it can only be used by a descendant of his family, and only to avert global disasters. But what...Paperback$2999Elsewhere:$3699Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New Release
Cold River
The sensational new novel from the author of the bestselling thriller, The Creeper, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction 2025. Deep in the mountains, secrets grow deadly... Detective Constable Sally White knows how easily hikers can go missing in Victoria's high country. But there's something about the disappearance of Louis Taylor, a young man lost up...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Buy to WinNew ReleaseIt Could Have Been Her
PREPARE TO BE HOOKED: The no. 1 Sunday Times and MULTI-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new spine tingling thriller. It was the night she almost died. Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Buy to Win26 Beauties
The twenty-sixth thrilling novel in the globally bestselling Women's Murder Club series. Beautiful young women are disappearing by the dozen. A celebration is cut short when a concerned father crashes Detective Inspector Lindsay Boxer's party. His daughter is missing - and she's not the only one. DI Lindsay Boxer has been tracking a chilling pattern: a Jane Doe washed ashore,...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New Release
The Secrets We Hide
The stunning new North Falls thriller by the bestselling author of We Are All Guilty Here 'Quite simply, Karin Slaughter is the best of us' Dervla McTiernan Welcome back to North Falls -- a small town with big secrets. The house at 1601 Iris Drive looks like any other in the quiet, residential street. But rumours are rife about the Vickery...Paperback$3099Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Buy to WinThe Parkwood Murders
They came for an escape, but can they escape a killer? Detective Nicola Bridge returns in another gripping and immersive mystery For its loyal guests, Parkwood Holiday Village in west Dorset is a haven- woodland walks, a tranquil lake, service around the clock. Until, just after midsummer, a body is found floating in the swimming pool. Detective Nicola Bridge, exhausted...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableBackorderShips mid September -
13% offHope Rises
'BALDACCI IS STILL PEERLESS' - THE SUNDAY TIMES REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . . Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him....Paperback$2700Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Slash
A year after a brutal shootout left her lover dead, ex-police sergeant Honey Chalmers is a hot mess, drinking too much and eating too little, working casual gigs for a shady firm of private investigators — while holding conversations with a ghost. A desperate father asks her to investigate his missing son — a double-murder suspect last seen during the...Paperback$3200Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
A River Red With Blood
The players call it the Game, and its aim is simple: to abduct and kill a stranger without getting caught. They're very good at it. They've been playing it for a long time. And they can keep playing as long as everyone sticks to the rules: No Killing Close to Home and No Killing Outside the Game. But those rules...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
Why buy from us?
Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!
Service & Delivery
Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.
Auckland Bookstore
We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.
Our Gifting Service
Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.
Crime & Thriller lists from the team
Explore our curated lists from our heroes to find your next read!
