Anti-hero vigilante, one Henry Arthur Milton, aka The Ringer, a legendary assassin who killed for personal vengeance. On Inspector Wembury of Scotland Yard's first day as the new commander of Deptford Division; his immediate superior Chief Inspector Bliss, is back from America full of ideas, his fiancee has just taken a job as secretary to a local lawyer Maurice Meister, a murderous criminal who Wembury knows - but cannot prove - was responsible for his fiancee's brother ending up in jail term for a robbery. Wembury's day is made miserably when the news that The Ringer confirmed dead in Australia, is back in London and desiring vengeance against Maurice Meister, for Henry Milton left his only sibling, a much younger sister, in Meister's wardship when he left London and after Milton was supposedly confirmed dead her body was found floating in the River Thames."