Set in the 1960s, this work of fiction focuses in on working life in a small diamond tool-making firm in the industrial midlands of England. Explored are the details of the work-processes, and the relations and interactions of the various characters populating that curious,claustrophobic world-within-a-world - characters which even include, it seems, the very diamonds themselves, devious,rebellious,recalcitrant. In this working culture can be found dark humour,anger,frustration and a confusion of hopes, dreams and resistance. It is the sort of culture that has been too rarely tackled in mainstream literary fiction.