Former tax inspector Bradley Pearson is a writer who has published nothing - his precept is perfect, his maxim is to wait - unlike his best friend Arnold Baffin who is a prolific, highly-successful writer of second-rate novels. Now Bradley is to retire to his seaside cottage to write his masterpiece. In a series of smartly comic scenes, his departure is thwarted by a succesision of unwelcome visitors and crises: a wheedling ex-brother-in-law, a detested ex-wife, a suicidal sister, a distraught phone call from Arthur who has battered his wife Rachel. But when the Baffin's teenage daughter Julia asks Bradley to give her a tutorial on Hamlet, "the god of love and art, the Black Eros, the Black Prince" is unleashed with dire and terrifying results.