The novels that compose Colin MacInnes's London trilogy, City_ of Spades, Absolute Beginners, and Mr. Love and Justice, are concerned with British society as it has evolved since World War II. By depicting certain "outsiders," MacInnes illustrates a basic cause of social unrest: the average Britisher is blind to societal changes resulting from the war. Most citizens mistreat the African immigrants, allow their children to be exploited by the few adults who realize the buying power of the postwar youth, and remain oblivious to crime, even among their own police force. Though the novels are social documentaries, they are also valuable as literature. MacInnes's exceptional powers of description, together with his facility with language in general, contribute to the trilogy's merit as a compelling exploration of the human condition.

Tom Randolph, the narrator of this short novel, is a recently divorced university instructor. The setting of the novel is inner-city Dallas, where Tom has leased an apartment after leaving his suburban home. Frustrated by a tenacious affection for his former wife Sharon and disgust at her remarriage to a drunken ranch laborer, Tom marries a muddled eighteen-year-old girl, .Faye. When Faye is abducted, Tom assents to Sharon's request to return to him. Tom buries an unrecognizable corpse he thinks is Faye, and Sharon's new "husband" (a bigamist) is killed in a brawl. After Tom and Sharon's remarriage, Faye reappears as a street-corner missionary.