Pain Hustlers

Praise

“A fast-paced and maddening account…. Until I read [Pain Hustlers], about the outrageous behavior of an obscure drug company, I hadn’t appreciated the full extent of the filth or the dark stain the opioid sector has left on the entire industry…. What’s most surprising and powerful about [Pain Hustlers] is not one company’s criminality—we’ve grown inured to corporations behaving badly—as much as how institutionalized these practices were across the modern drug industry.” 
—New York Times Book Review

“A feat of rigorous sleuthing and deft storytelling that unfolds with the velocity and verve of a Scorsese film. Everything about the Insys saga feels amplified to its utmost extreme—greed, ambition, criminality, hustle, intrigue, betrayals—and this is that rare story of the opioid crisis in which the bad guys face a genuine reckoning. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. A tour de force.”
—Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing

“A richly reported, mesmerizing tale, and a devastating indictment of our broken pharmaceutical industry. Everyone should read this book.”
—Sheelah Kolhatkar, staff writer at The New Yorker and New York Times bestselling author of Black Edge

“Filled with odd and scintillating details, [Pain Hustlers] plots the winding way one drug company and its associated doctors helped to beget the latest wave in our ongoing opioid crisis.”
—Errol Morris, Academy Award–winning filmmaker

“When you’re running a pharma startup, how does the obvious wrong thing to do become the thing you do anyway? [Pain Hustlers], fascinating in the fashion of a slow-moving train wreck, is a study of corruption in which we see how the actions of key executives make a kind of awful sense given the ecosystem in which they operate.”
—Ted Conover, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of Newjack and The Routes of Man

“Vivid…A tightly focused and insightful account…As a gripping tale of one drug firm’s unscrupulous efforts to profit from pain, [Pain Hustlers] is hard to beat.”
—The Boston Globe

“Excellent…Hughes has somehow produced what feels like a seamless, fly-on-the-wall account that can be devoured in one sitting.”
—The Globe and Mail

“A revelatory deep dive into the ignominious history of the pharmaceutical manufacturer Insys Therapeutics…Hughes does an excellent job of illuminating the inner workings of Big Pharma’s malicious practices…A powerful indictment of abhorrent industry practices.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“As compelling as a true crime documentary…Hughes perfectly captures the human impact of pharmaceutical sales and corporate greed…Anyone who picks up this title will be left reflecting on how the U.S. medical system and drug companies have recklessly destroyed countless lives. A book readers will not soon forget.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

“A journalist pulls back the curtain on the scandals that sent the first pharmaceutical executives to prison for their role in the opioid crisis…A brisk and engaging account.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Unfolds like a blockbuster film. Fans of Bad Blood by John Carreyrou will be captivated by this story of unbelievable greed and hubris. A must-read.”
—Booklist (starred review)