Roy Dillon is young, good-looking and devastatingly charming. He's also a completely amoral conman. Lily, his mother, works for the mob. Moir Langtry, Roy's mistress, is always looking for the main chance, and so is Carol Roberg, the nurse brought in to look after Roy when a bad choice of mark means he has an unfortunate encounter with a baseball bat and a bad case of internal bleeding. Together they make up a perverse quadrangle of love and greed in a coruscating novel of corruption.
'Crime Masterworks' is a library of the greatest crime fiction ever written, chosen with the help of today's leading crimewriters and critics. However, they are categorised - hard-boiled, suspense, police procedural - all books in the series are the best of their kind.