Joe Rose, aged 47, and his long-term partner Clarissa Mellon are about to open a bottle of wine when a cry interrupts them.

Delusional and dangerous, Jed gradually wreaks havoc in Joe's life, testing the limits of his beloved rationalism, threatening Clarissa's love for him, and driving him to frustration.

She accuses her dead husband of having an affair with another woman and asks Joe to phone other people who were present at the accident to ascertain if they had seen anyone with Logan.

She says her husband was a cautious man and probably only died because he was showing off to the woman, trying to prove his manliness, and thereby taking unnecessary risks, rather than hanging back and staying safe.

However, Joe realises the bullet was meant for himself and the similar composition of the group of people at the other table misled the two killers into thinking the other man was their target.

In the first of the novel's appendices (a medical report on Jed's condition) we learn that Joe and Clarissa are eventually reconciled, and that they adopt a child.

The film version was directed by Roger Michell, written by Joe Penhall, and starred Daniel Craig, Rhys Ifans and Samantha Morton, with Bill Nighy, Susan Lynch and Corin Redgrave.

In 2023, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a dramatization written by Kate Clanchy, starring Blake Ritson and Hattie Morahan, and produced and directed by Amber Barnfather.

[3] The book contains an appendix purporting to be a scientific paper ("A Homo-Erotic Obsession, with Religious Overtones: A Clinical Variant of de Clerambault's Syndrome") describing a case study identical to the one around which the narrative is based.