Oliver Ryan is a handsome and charismatic success story. He lives a life of enviable privilege and ease with his wife Alice. Enviable until, one evening after dinner, Oliver attacks Alice so viciously that he beats her into a coma.

Oliver is stunned by his own actions. In the aftermath, as everyone tries to make sense of his astonishing act of savagery, he tells his story. So do those whose paths he has crossed over five decades. What unfolds is both tragic and monstrous, a story of shame, envy, breath-taking deception and masterful manipulation.

Only Oliver knows what he had to do to get the life he craved, and to which he felt entitled. But even he is in for a shock when the past finally catches up with him.