Mickey Collins, son of a drug-dealer, relates his amazing tale from childhood to something approaching being an adult. The streets of Cork, Ireland, is where Mickey learns fine skills such as pre-teen drinking, shoplifting and breaking & entering. However, after Mickey disobeys his mother once too often, a lifetime of pain (or 'adventure' as Mickey would see it) descends upon him, as he bounces from one State service to another.

A kaleidoscopic tour through twenty years of modern Ireland's discarded dregs of society ensues, where we discover an underworld of petty crime and passions-fulfilled to the detriment of all else - most significantly (though not exclusively) to the perpetrators themselves.

...But there is something else. As Mickey's mother, Tanya Collins, manipulates everyone & everything whilst building her drug empire, Mickey's navigation of his world reveals a curiously innocent and almost pure Humanity in this most unlikely of places.