Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of violence, murder, death by suicide, and infidelity.

The novel is narrated in the first person and the present tense by an unnamed, 39-year-old man. The narrator is at a bar, where he approaches a woman named Petra and types a message on his phone saying that his name is Tobias, he is deaf, and he is an accountant. They chat, using the phone along with Tobias’s alleged lip-reading abilities. They go to Petra’s apartment, continue chatting, and have sex. Petra falls asleep. The narrator steals her earrings and then turns to leave, but Petra wakes up and asks if he is really deaf. He pretends he does not hear her.

The narrator returns home to his wife, Millicent, and his kids, Rory, 14, and Jenna, 13. He informs Millicent that Petra is not “right” for them. He means she is not the right person for them to murder, though he does not say this outright. He does not tell Millicent that he slept with Petra. He is not an accountant; he teaches private tennis lessons at a country club.