What Amazon says
In March 1978, at the culmination of Operation Julie, 15 defendants, including doctors, research chemists, a writer, and “professional” drug dealers were sentenced to a combined total of 124 years’ imprisonment. Operation Julie is still today the point of reference for all British undercover operations and training. In 2011, the BBC claimed this massive and unique police operation was the start of the war on drugs. Stephen Bentley, was one of four undercover detectives engaged on Operation Julie, one of the world’s largest drug busts.
Together with his undercover partner, Bentley infiltrated the gang producing around 90 percent of the world’s LSD and uncovered a plot to import huge quantities of Bolivian cocaine into the UK. The underworld knew the author as Steve Jackson. How did he successfully infiltrate the two gangs? Did he have to take drugs, and how did living a lie affect him? Discover the answers and get inside the mind of Steve Jackson, undercover detective.
My review
I listened to the audio book of Undercover: Operation Julie. The narrator did a good job of telling this story and had a pleasant and smooth reading style. I would certainly recommend the audio book to people who like to listen to, rather than read, stories.
This book is an autobiography of a period in the author’s life when he was an undercover cop in a historic police investigation that led to the breakup of a huge LSD manufacturing and distribution operation in Great Britain. The story is set during the 1970’s and the author, known by the underworld as Steve Jackson, and his undercover partner need to integrate themselves into the shady and dangerous world of small time drug dealers and work themselves up so that they can find out who the ring leaders are.
Steve Bentley’s depiction of how both cops have to completely sever all ties to their “real” lives and eat, sleep and breath their assumed persona is compelling and quite frightening. To put yourself into a situation where you need to become a hard drinking, drug taking low-life seems inconceivable to me and the author describes how difficult it eventually becomes to separate your actual mind from that of your assumed personality. Over time, and with the help of drugs, they start to merge and you start living your lie.
Of course, both cops manage to keep their eye on the ball and work towards their ultimate goal of uncovering the entire drug smuggling and selling operation. They, together with the other undercover detectives, the police and various other involved parties, are successful in the end and the doctors, chemists, drug dealers and related parties to what became known as Project Julie were brought to justice.
I thought this was a fascinating, first hand account of this amazing story which reads just like an action movie. It was well written and detailed in a way that only a person who lived the story could describe. The last section of the book deals with the impact years of undercover work had on the life of the author. I was surprised at the lack of support and treatment for post traumatic stress disorder that was made available to Steve. I would have expected more from a first world country like Great Britain. Hopefully, this has changed and people in the line of fire doing jobs for the benefit of the citizens of a country get better after treatment after their discharge from the police force.













![Undercover: Operation Julie - The Inside Story: A Gripping True Story of Britain's Biggest Drug Bust. True Crime. by [Bentley, Stephen]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51K5Grz6dcL.jpg)
