It tells the story of a teenage boy who stole a motorcycle and killed someone with it then he tried to get through his everyday life whilst trying to avoid getting caught.

[1][2] On his evening walk one Wednesday night fifteen-year-old Ray got tempted by a Honda 125 motorbike outside a pub with its engine running so he got on and went for a joyride.

Ray gave him fake details and was reminded not to go on the bus without any money and when he got home he went straight to bed and locked the door to hide his injuries from his family.

In the morning Ray washed the blood from his pillow case, hair and the inside of his hood then checked the daily newspaper.

That afternoon in school the history teacher chose that day to teach them about Sir Robert Peel and developments in the police force including crime detection methods.

A girl in the class asked a question about whether it was true that only 40% of all crimes were detected and solved then a couple of other pupils also heard about that figure reassuring Ray about the fallibility of the police.

The next morning at breakfast Ray checked the local weekly paper and it had a report of the hit and run incident on the front page where the woman was named as Mrs. Maureen Chalmers and the police were still trying to trace the rider of the stolen bike.

When he got there his friend Dave Fitzroy told him that Mrs. Chalmers was the wife of a school governor so they had a minutes silence and prayers for her in assembly that morning.

Rays team won though he injured an opponent by accident but his teammates and PE teacher agreed that it was a fair tackle.

After lunch Ray stayed behind to look after his eight-year-old brother Derek, from whom their parents kept Grandma's illness secret, while they went back to the hospital.

Penguin toned down the language with most of the profanity removed or replaced with euphemisms but otherwise they remained largely faithful to the first edition and continued using the Oxford spelling.

In later editions the other publishers modernized the references to culture and technology from the 1970s and exact prices removed though they retained the Oxford spelling.