 Aged 42, de Boissière settled into a clerical job, from which he retired in 1980.In Australia he joined the Communist Party and had his first novel, "Crown Jewel", published in 1952 by the leftist Australasian Book Society.Like all his work this depicts the struggles of the working class with realistic sympathy, culminating with a portrayal of a 1937 strike in Trinidad brutally put down by police shooting.