When Angela Collingham's drug-filled body is found on a banquette in the Avondale wine bar, Dover police are on the alert for a killer. Then Angie's client, a studmuffin called Bunny Daniel, is found dead on a bed. Nobody suspects big fat Nick, who works at the Avondale, but he's planning a major blackmail job on Angie's wealthy ex-husband, Mike Clayton.

Enter briefly Angie's schoolgirl daughter, Judy, Clayton's estranged heir. With her nicely out of the way in a shallow grave, Nick can substitute her beautiful cousin Ursula, and get access to Clayton's business: The Jewellery Safe Deposit in London. Clayton accepts Ursula as his daughter, but will she play the game and help Nick and his loathsome colleague, Hardwood, to megabucks?

In this taut tale of greed, desperation and mayhem, O A Davies takes potshots at people from all levels of society: the rich, the needy, the local bloodsuckers and the robber barons from overseas. Life is indeed cruel when you're poor