Being a writer is a dangerous business...
Hostile reviews may have hastened the deaths of some writers, but Cubby Greenwich is made of sterner stuff. At least this is what he tells himself, meanwhile obsessing about the scathing review of his latest bestseller by Shearman Waxx in a national newspaper. A feared and therefore revered critic, Waxx has an aura of mystery about him that has carried him far as an arbiter of taste, but the mystery itself is about to break cover.