Late author of a successful first novel, Adrien Winckler has his back to the wall. He struggles to give birth to a second opus, to the chagrin of his companion Nora who wishes to start a family and is exasperated to see him stall. Stuck in jobs as a feather-lender, he agrees to write the memoirs of Albert, an atrabilair and frighteningly intelligent old man. His client turns out to be a former serial killer, ready to recount the crimes he committed forty years earlier with his partner Solange.