David Loogan is leading a new and quietly anonymous life in a new town. But his solitude is broken when he finds himself drawn into a friendship with Tom Kristoll, the melancholy publisher of the crime magazine Gray Streets - and into an affair with Laura, Tom's sleek blond wife.

When Tom offers him a job as an editor, Loogan sees no harm in accepting. What he doesn't realise is that the stories in Gray Streets tend to follow a simple formula:

PLANS GO WRONG. BAD THINGS HAPPEN. PEOPLE DIE.

Then one night David's new boss phones him in a panic, asking him to come to his house immediately. And bring a shovel...