When Sherwin Wyser sees two cops standing at his front door with hats in hand, he knows right away what has happened. His wife has been murdered and Sherwin is devastated beyond words. Allison was a newspaper reporter investigating the activities of Raymond Dark, a well-connected politician and gangster, and Sherwin feared for her safety. It becomes clear that Dark will not be punished for Allison's murder and Sherwin begins to contemplate revenge. But how will a diffident, sedentary college professor, unskilled in the use of fire arms or fisticuffs, exact revenge upon a gangster? Sherwin understands that it won't happen the way it does in the movies where ordinary people suddenly become able to outfight and out-shoot those more practiced in the killing arts. His rational mind tells him that revenge will be both suicidal and morally repugnant and he has no illusions of coming out victorious, or even coming out alive, but his emotions rise up with unexpected intensity and move him against his will like a stranger within his own skin. Will he seek revenge? When Sherwin finally makes up his mind, a bizarre coincidence shakes his belief in the rational world he has built for himself. And revenge may take strange forms.