W. Sledge is a successful young criminal who has achieved too much, too soon. Living in a pleasant council flat in a London tower block, he owns a Jaguar, receives unemployment benefit and keeps an underage mistress. In his own eyes, W. Sledge has everything, until a routine robbery goes too far. The result is murder, and when the crime incites latent psychopathic tendencies, he murders again. As his path intertwines with a runaway girl and his childhood friend, this award-winning story comes to an immoral but extraordinary climax.