In a place somewhere between town and country in the bleak Northeast, Errol Oldfield spends his time fantasizing about the celibate Maxine, his co-worker at the Thrifty Miss Betsy discount store. His landlord is gradually squeezing him out to make way for the soon-to-be grief stricken Robert, who is biding his time until his ailing wife dies, and in the background lurks the threat of a good old-fashioned slap, if not from the yobs who interfere with Errol"s lucrative salmon-poaching sideline then from the heavies hired by the husband of the well-to-do Mrs Forbes Tyson, a lady not averse to a bit of rough. As the characters drudge through their unenviable lives, leeching off each other physically and financially, Errol dips in and out of his growing paranoia and the reader is given a glimpse of the man that used to be. It is inconceivable that Taylor actually meant you to like Errol or any of the other characters that haunt this modern-day black comedy. Instead he allows you to eavesdrop on a world where a group of charmless, desperate people are drawn together, not through love, but through the need to merely exist until they die.