The story of a crime in which the weapon is a novel. Edward and Nicolas have been friends for thirty years. Edward is English and a renowned publisher. Nicolas is French and a best-selling author. But one day, Nicolas brings Edward a manuscript and urges him to read it because this one is "different", he says. "It's personal". From the first pages, Edward finds a moving, intense novel in a new style but the more he reads, the more horrified he becomes.The manuscript that he has in his hands is none other than the story of a crime committed thirty years earlier, a terrible secret that has haunted Edward since that time because he was, involuntarily, one of the actors in it. And, in the manuscript, the guilty party inadvertently reveals his identity: Nicolas Fabry, his close friend. Edward, aware that this book will bring his friend fame and fortune, realizes the possibility of using the book's enormous potential to take his revenge. Without no apparent violence, the highly respectable Sir Edward Lamb gradually sets up the most incredible and inflexible plot.