Mr and Mrs Surray and their five children form a prolific writing machine, with scores of novels, scientific treatises, reviews and crime thrillers published under their family name. Following a rare convergence of the whole household at their Oxfordshire home, Ruth - middle sister who writes 'books which are just books' - decides to spend some weeks with her parents recovering from the pressures of the writing life while the rest of the brood scatter to the winds again. Their next return is heralded by the tragic news that Ruth has apparently taken her life after an evening at the Surrays' hosting a selection of publishers and writers, one of whom has been named as Ruth's literary executor in the will she left behind.