Dillon, a small time gunman, seeks to make a big break, and he stumbles across other gangsters and their girls, with whom initially he strikes a chord but soon falls out. The book traces the ruthless and selfish journey of Dillon from nomadic gunman to rich Gangster in Kansas, and the consequences he faces on the way, with a never ending pursuit of crime after crime and adversaries to follow him. The moral of the book is "Crime never pays".