A few minutes before killing his father and mother in cold blood, Benjamin Feller–a young 18-year-old who apparently had no prior history–mails his intimate diary, in which he explains and confesses his act, to his French teacher. The teacher finds herself being questioned by the authorities and is soon filled with doubt. What if her taste for literature that is obsessed with the sufferings of the human soul had blinded her to her student’s distress and to what was hidden in the feverish prose he had shown her well before his crime?