Lawyer Foster Cobb prosecutes the mysterious Dr. Au, the West Coast’s primary drug trafficker. But Cobb — under pressure of a failing practice and a disintegrating marriage — has himself taken up a long-abandoned heroin habit. With a racing plot and dramatic flip-flops, Deverell’s literary page-turner takes the reader into the seamy undergrowth of crooked cops, Asian drug lords, and a super-charged courtroom scene. Winner of the $50,000 Seal First Novel Prize in 1979, William Deverell’s Needles has gone on to sell 250,000 copies. Deverell’s first novel launched his career, and since then his books have sold over 1,000,000 copies in various editions.

"Deverell has a narrative style so lean that scenes and characters seem to explode on the page. He makes the evil of his plot breathtaking and his surprises like shattering glass."
— Philadelphia Bulletin

"Spell-binding, first-rate. A brilliant craftsman."
— Buffalo News