When Cordell Carmel catches his long-term girlfriend in the throes of ecstasy with another man - the thick-necked chauvinist Johnny Fry - something profound happens to him. Overnight, the calm life of this middle-aged translator becomes something unrecognizable. As the boundaries of his routine existence dissolve, he finds himself suddenly prey both to thoughts of murder and to an insatiable libido, and begins a dark and outrageously explicit sexual odyssey through New York in search of retribution and gratification. Along the way, he develops an obsession with a mysterious woman named Sisypha, who leads him deep into the erotic heart of the city. "Killing Johnny Fry" is about a man questioning for the first time the social and sexual rules we take for granted - and the powerful, disturbing connections that can be made between people when these rules are subverted. It is something altogether new and provocative from one of America's most celebrated writers.