It is 1936 - the year of the Abdication Crisis - and gangland capo Sonny Tarrant's money-laundering operation is being threatened by three small-time thieves thinking big.

Would-be gangsters Sandboy, McGouran and Gillis have carried out a violent raid on the premises of furrier Pelly Pender. But Pender insists to the police that no attack took place, for he knows the trio will face a different justice in which the law plays no part. And Sandboy soon finds himself caught in a nightmare world in which Tarrant manipulates his victims with the deftness of a flick-knife.

His last hope is Yvonne Manders, once the stage-dancer 'Lady Blue' . . .