The Unclean

Walter Sparrow, an amiable dog-catcher, takes a call that has him bitten by a dog bit and late to pick up his wife. While browsing in a bookstore, she finds a blood-red-covered novel, a murder mystery with numerology that loops constantly around the number 23. The story captivates Walter. Soon, he dreams it, then notices aspects of his life that can be rendered by the 23 and he searches for the author, stays in a hotel room 23 where certain key events in the novel took place, and he begins to believe it was no novel. His wife and son try to help him, sometimes in sympathy, sometimes to protect him. But slowly, with danger to himself and to his family, he closes in…