In 1854, master thief Edward Pierce plans to steal a shipment of gold worth more than £12,000 being transported monthly from London to the Crimean War front.

With the assistance of his longtime mistress, an actress known only as "Miss Miriam", and his loyal associate, a buck cabby named Barlow, Pierce and Agar successfully break into Trent's home and wine cellar by night and make a wax impression of the key.

Bank manager Henry Fowler contracts syphilis and asks his friend Pierce to aid him in seeking a remedy: sleeping with a virgin.

Pierce helps burglar "Clean Willy" Williams escape from Newgate Prison and the criminals succeed in making wax copies of the two keys at the railway station, completing the job with only seconds to spare before detection.

Through careful manipulation of another informant, Pierce diverts the police's attention to an alleged robbery of the transatlantic cable company's payroll in Greenwich, leaving the thieves free and clear to finally strike.

By the next day, much of England is in an uproar upon the discovery of the robbery, with every organisation involved in the gold shipment blaming each other, few leads as to the true culprits and no idea how it was done.

[5] Three audiobook versions have been released: The novel was later made into a 1978 film entitled The First Great Train Robbery directed by Crichton starring Sean Connery as Pierce, Donald Sutherland as Agar and Lesley-Anne Down as Miriam.