The young Philip Marlow returns to the country railway station following his mother's death in London. Forty years on, Marlow the hospital patient still dreams about the homecoming and the frightening figure of the scarecrow that now erupts into the ward.

Marlow is getting better and the different strands of his fiction and reality begin to occupy the same time and place.

Marlow as a child visits London, but is not impressed. A film option on Marlow's novel thickens the plot. His memories, his 30s style gumshoe fiction and his disease weave him an altered reality.

While in hospital with psoriasis, Marlow thinks back to the war when he was a little boy, and remembers seeing his mother having illicit sex in the Forest of Dean. His memories, his 30s style gumshoe fiction and his disease weave him an altered reality.

Marlow faces his personal misery of the talking cure with the psychologist who wants to help him with his psychosomatic psoriasis and has actually read Marlow's novel. Nicola, an ambitious and demanding actress, appears in Marlow's hospital ward just as he is thinking about her. Marlow is suspicious of his former wife, and his wretched state exposes his vulnerability. Only the fact that his imagination is running riot keeps him occupied.

What is the connection between the beady private eye crooning soft songs at the Laguna, and the disfigured man struggling for his sanity in a hospital bed?

Why does the small boy spy from the top of the tree, and who is the naked girl dragged out of the murky Thames? The clues are bloody and tangled, but the singing detective knows that the answers will eventually jump out of him as long as he keeps singing the right tunes.