The Heist is a story that traces the lives of four boys from their childhood, when they got their first taste of crime through to the time when they start engaging in small-time criminal acts, their incarceration in the local approved school, their planned and actualized escape from the approved school, and their escape to the capital city. The novel also describes their induction into city life and then meeting their former pal from Masimane, who had become a professional thug. Their joining of his criminal gang, their exploits of robbing various places, all the way to the time they become the nation's most-wanted criminals. Their crime careers eventually being cut short by the gun that they lived by.