Growing up in 1950s Auckland, Greg Newbold's early years were marked by order and chaos in equal measure, as his stable childhood life later became transformed by his mother's alcoholism. After leaving school at 17, in 1970 he entered university and soon became immersed in the drug-fuelled hedonism of the era. Always a risk-taker, he began dealing in the drugs he was using, both soft and hard, until in July 1975 he was arrested and charged with offering to sell 34 grams of heroin to a police informant. Convicted and sentenced to seven-and-a-half years imprisonment, he spent the first half of his sentence in the maximum-security prison at Paremoremo before being transferred to a prison camp.

Dubbed 'Dream Dealer' by a fellow inmate, it was at Paremoremo that Newbold began to take a serious look at his future. He knew that his best chance of rescuing his life lay in continuing his studies in prison. Already a graduate before his arrest, Greg pursued an MA in anthropology, submitting a ground-breaking thesis on the social organisation of Paremoremo maximum-security prison that earned first class honours and a scholarship. After his release, he completed a PhD, became a lecturer at Canterbury University and rose to become one of New Zealand's leading criminologists.

Dream Dealer charts Newbold's transformation from prisoner to professor with clarity and candour. He relives the roller coaster ride of his life, describing the world of the prison in the 1970s and his eventful journey through it. He recounts the sometimes-dramatic process of adjusting to freedom after release, as well as his apivotal role in the Committee of Inquiry into Oakley psychiatric hospital which led to the institution's eventual closure.

Fast-moving and unadorned, Dream Dealer is the story of a man who has lived on both sides of the law but who is defined by neither.