Nice little houses. Nice people. Quiet, respectable. No brokers' men. No scandals. No screams in the night. Morris Oxfords, little greenhouses, wireless sets.'

Ferndale, Laburnum Grove. A quiet, residential address in one of the newer north London suburbs. George Radfern, decent, respectable citizen and householder spends his Sunday evenings in his greenhouse, listening to Handel on the wireless. But when his grasping in-laws and daughter's obnoxious beau try to coax more money from him, George makes an unlikely confession.

An exploration of greed and dishonesty in suburban England, Priestley observes the facade of middle class respectability, and its crooked undercurrent with verve and humanity in this immorally comic story of money, family, and criminality.