Plot summary

From his current home where he's lived for the past year, Henry Holland, a former milquetoast who has blossomed in this environment, relays the story of his thoughts of the previous nineteen years as a poorly paid London bank clerk in the gold bullion division, he overseeing the pouring of the molten metal into ingots and their transportation from the foundry to the bank vault. While he was seen as a trusted but ambitionless employee in his virtue and preciseness, he dreamed of wealth and comfort by owning that gold. The stealing of the gold ingots was not the problem in his estimation, but rather the need to smuggle the gold out of the country in knowing that no one in Britain could handle such hot items. His dreams looked to be realized upon the meeting of Alfred Pendlebury in he moving into the same Lavender Hill rooming house as Holland, Pendlebury a designer and manufacturer of tacky souvenirs. Holland was able to convince his new housemate to be his partner in crime by transforming whatever gold they would steal into Eiffel Tower paperweights - Pendlebury usually making them out of lead - to be easily shipped to Pendlebury's Paris distribution network without detection. But Holland knew they also needed true criminals in their operation, ones they could trust not to trust, the problem being where to find such individuals. Even with what he believed were all the pieces in place to carry out the crime, Holland and his Lavender Hill Mob may have faced the plight of any best laid plan.—Huggo