100,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock 🇳🇿

Enjoy overnight NZ-wide delivery from our NZ-owned independent bookstore! 🎉

The Night Dragon

The Vincent O'Dempsey Story
3.39 goodreads logo

Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.

Check link for latest rating.
( 137 ratings, 21 reviews)
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
The Night Dragon, by Matthew Condon, delves into the complex world of crime and corruption within Queensland's police force. The story follows an investigative journey to uncover buried secrets and twisted relationships, offering a gripping exploration of morality, justice, and the search for truth. This crime thriller invites readers into a shadowy world where the past lingers ominously over the present.
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK Please add to wishlist to be notified when back in stock

Sorry, we're currently out of stock of The Night Dragon. Please add to your Wishlist and we'll send you an email as soon as it's back in stock.

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?

This book may appeal to you if you enjoy gripping crime thrillers with twists and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat. It delves into the dark underbelly of crime and mystery, offering a blend of suspense and intrigue that captivates from start to finish.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

How a famous cold case, a deadly fire and a quest for justice finally brought down one of Australia's worst killers

How a famous cold case, a deadly fire and a quest for justice finally brought down one of Australia's worst killers.

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

How a famous cold case, a deadly fire and a quest for justice finally brought down one of Australia's worst killers.

'He takes you in the middle of the night, like an angel, and you're gone for good.' - Witness at Vincent O'Dempsey's committal hearing for murder, 2015.

In 2017, Vincent O'Dempsey was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal murders of Barbara McCulkin and her two young daughters. It took over 40 years to bring him to justice. Feared for decades by criminals and police alike, O'Dempsey associated with convicted underworld figures and has been linked to a string of haunting cold cases, including the deadly Whiskey au Go Go nightclub firebombing that killed 15 innocent people.

Award-winning investigative journalist Matthew Condon has interviewed dozens of ex-cons, police and witnesses to put together a compelling picture of the calculating killer who spent his life evading the law before he was finally brought to justice.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780702260209

Publisher: University of Queensland Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 19 March 2019

Country: Australia

Imprint: University of Queensland Press

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 22.0mm

Width: 153.0mm

Height: 225.0mm

Weight: 405g

Pages: 320

About the Author

Matthew Condon is a prize-winning Australian novelist and journalist. He is currently on staff with the Courier-Mail's Qweekend magazine. He began his journalism career with the Gold Coast Bulletin in 1984 and subsequently worked for leading newspapers and journals including the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sun-Herald and Melbourne's Sunday Age. He has written ten books of fiction, including The Trout Opera and is the author of the best-selling true-crime series about Queensland crime and corruption - Three Crooked Kings, Jacks and Jokers, All Fall Down and Little Fish are Sweet.

Also by Matthew Condon

View all
  • Three Crooked Kings
    One of the landmark Australian true-crime books, with a new introduction following the death of disgraced Police Commissioner Terry Lewis. 'It was the genius of the system ... from day to day you didn't know who was on the take or not. You didn't know who you could trust.' Three Crooked Kings is the shocking true story of Queensland and...
    Paperback
    $3600
    Elsewhere:
    $4000
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Jacks and Jokers
    The message was powerfully clear. If you threatened the harmony of the Joke, you didn't last long. Continuing on from the bestselling Three Crooked Kings, Jacks and Jokers opens in 1976. Terry Lewis, exiled in western Queensland, is soon to be controversially appointed Police Commissioner. As for the other two original Crooked Kings, Tony Murphy is set to ruthlessly take...
    Paperback
    $4200
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Little Fish Are Sweet
    Little Fish Are Sweet is Matthew Condon's extraordinary personal account of writing the Three Crooked Kings trilogy. When Condon first interviewed disgraced former police commissioner Terry Lewis, he had no idea that it would be the start of a turbulent six-year journey. As hundreds of people came forward to share their powerful and sometimes shocking stories, decades of crime and...
    Paperback
    $4000
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • All Fall Down
    The gripping finale to Three Crooked Kings and Jacks and Jokers brings to a close Matthew Condon's best-selling true-crime trilogy. In 1983, the soon-to-be-knighted Police Commissioner Terry Lewis continues to turn a blind eye to the operation of The Joke, a highly organised system of graft payments from illegal gambling, prostitution, and illicit drugs. As the tentacles of this fraudulent...
    Paperback
    $4200
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Brisbane
    I keep coming back to the light of Brisbane. If you are born into it, this palette of gentle pinks and oranges at dawn and dusk, the blast white of midday in summer, the lemon luminescence of mid-morning and mid-afternoon, you keep it with you and measure all other light by it. If you live away from it, then step...
    Paperback
    Sold Out

More from Crime & Thriller

View all
  • New Release
    Dying 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
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Country Road Murders
    New Release
    The 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
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    Every 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
    $3299
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Nautilus
    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
    $2999
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Cold River
    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
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    It 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
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • 26 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
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships 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
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    The 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
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Hope 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
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships 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
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships 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
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships 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

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

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

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.