A Child of the Jago

Dicky Perrott, born into the Jago's casual crime and violence, has inarticulate yearnings towards other possibilities. At first, he dreams of becoming a High Mobsman - one of the aristocrats of Jago crime. With the arrival of Father Sturt, he sees how his horizons might alter. But the Jago holds fast to its own. Dicky's path takes him through a savage but colourful community of fighting tribes, pickpockets and cosh-carriers, where the police only ever enter in threes, and where murder erupts with an unusual horror and intimacy.