On Easter Saturday, a policeman is shot attempting to stop a building society robbery.

Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Fox, head of the Flying Squad at New Scotland Yard and scourge of London’s underworld, gets out from behind his desk and interferes. But there is more to the crime than is at first apparent.

A Cézanne painting has mysteriously disappeared, a supermarket in France is robbed, and a man is murdered. Then Fox and his men get wind of a plan to rob a safe depository.

Fox’s enquiries point to Danny Horsfall, a man who launders stolen money ... a man whose underworld activities have long attracted the keen interest of the police.

Despite facing one of the most difficult challenges of his career and an almost impenetrable international crime ring that leads him from HMP Wormwood Scrubs to Paris and Brussels, meeting drug pushers, crooked art dealers, prostitutes, fraudsters and gun runners, Fox is determined to bring The Laundry Man to justice.

Horsfall, however, has been careful to cover his tracks — weapons are hidden, women are coerced and rivals are silenced. In his world, danger is commonplace and loyalty is rare. Beneath the light-hearted banter of the Flying Squad, everyone knows that in real crime real people get hurt ...