After murdering his wife in a fit of existential rage, Stephen Rojack must navigate a treacherous landscape of high-society corruption and his own fractured psyche to survive the night. Rojack, a war hero and television personality, finds himself entangled in a web of police scrutiny and the machinations of the wealthy elite. He operates within a world defined by moral decay and the pursuit of power, where every interaction is a calculated gamble. The narrative unfolds through a feverish, first-person perspective that mirrors the protagonist's descent into paranoia and self-destruction.

This novel is frequently analyzed for its aggressive, stylistic departure from traditional realism and its unflinching look at the darker impulses of the American psyche. Critics often point to the work as a polarizing example of Mailer's mid-career experimentation with noir tropes and existentialist philosophy. The narrative's intense, often erratic tone reflects the turbulent social climate of the era in which it was written. Readers generally engage with the text as a challenging study of a man attempting to justify his own existence through acts of extreme transgression.