Cirrus@Austlit

'The world looks pretty good to Joe Quist. Five years at the war have given him a chance to break away from his old criminal associates, and, as manager of Porter's Newsagency, he has almost forgotten that he was once Charlie Hatcher, expert safe-cracker and former gaolbird. A chance meeting with Marion Burch, whom he saves from a thug, gives Joe a new interest in life, but before he can find out anything about the girl except where she lives, his old life catches up with him again.

Threatened with exposure and the loss of his job, he is forced by Spellman, head of his old gang, to open a safe in a Toorak home, where Brock, a jeweller, has stored recently imported diamonds. Joe has to agree, although he fears that, whatever happens, he will be murdered. Something goes wrong with the gang's plans, and just as Joe realises that he is not, as he thought, alone in the house, he hears a pistol shot in the garden below, where Tony and Len, two of the gang, are on watch.' (Publisher's abstract)