Adrian Ludlow, a novelist with a distinguished reputation and a book on the A level syllabus, is now seeking obscurity in a cottage beneath the Gatwick flight path. His university friend Sam Sharp, who has become a successful screen writer, drops in on the way to Los Angeles, fuming over a vicious profile of himself by Fanny Tarrant, one of the new breed of Rottweiler interviewers, in a Sunday newspaper. Together they decide to take revenge on the interviewer, though Adrian is risking what he values most: his privacy.