"Do it, just fucking do it." With those words, those six, stupid, semi-literate words, Gabriel O'Donnell sets in motion a sequence of events that will dominate the lives of two families for the next three generations, and which bring in their wake a series of murders, guilt, hatred and revenge. It is the East End of the early 1960s, an era of raw, violent crime, but times are good for the O'Donnells. They have the gambling, the working girls, and all the protection rackets well under their control. They are feared and respected. But then Harold Kessler, an old enemy of Gabriel's, actually has the impudence to think he can bring his family back to east London and just move in on the O'Donnells' businesses. Gabriel won't accept such liberty taking and sends his sons round to teach the Kesslers a lesson. But when the boys confront Kessler's son, Sammy, in the street, things go horribly wrong, and one of them accidentally shoots dead a seventeen-year-old girl. As the terrible realisation dawns that the girl is none other than Catherine - their own sister, who has been secretly seeing Sammy Kessler - the mayhem really begins. Things can never be the same again.