This is an intelligent, sensitive and tense novel about the intimate triangle of man, woman and child. "The Crime of Writing explores sexual identity and the relationship between life and literature. A young woman meets an elderly Englishman, George Brown, while she is visiting London. After his death, she receives his written confession. Her husband, a novelist, decides to publish it. The confession opens with the so-called sin of writing. Brown, who never married or had a family of his own, persistently tries to find out the secret of his mother's disappearance. His relationship with his father and longing for his absent mother creates a conundrum, which is only revealed to Brown in the closing pages.