This new novel focuses on London in eccentric occupants of Corduroy Mansions in Pimlico. Residents run the gamut from the very likable to the much loathed. There's William, a well-meaning, widowed wine merchant determined to oust his lazy twentysomething son from his house. (He's enlisted the assistance of his neighbor, Marcia, who's taken his desire for collusion as a romantic advance.) Four young women share a flat below him. Among them is Dee, a health-food devotee who can't understand a male coworker's resistance to her offer of a high-colonic, and art history student Caroline, who has designs on a friend unsure whether he wants to date women or men. Then there's the thoroughly despicable Oedipus Snark, a Parliament member devoid of scruples, conscience, and class. Even his own mother despises him; she's writing his biography, with the aim of exposing every one of his faults.
One of the ways William tries to get rid of Eddie is by becoming a co-owner of Freddie de la Hay, a canine who has many ideas of what he wants to do instead. Eventually William (tipsy on too much champaign) agrees to letting Marcia move in and moving all of Eddie's belongings into the hallway. They discover a small painting that they suspect Eddie stole as it seems to good to be true. We see Eddie's true character when he kicks Freddie de la Hay and later kidnaps him for what appears to be a dog fight.