Living somewhere in present-day Quebec, Boris Malinowski has achieved all his goals. A freethinker, open-minded and proud, he also displays a certain arrogance when it comes to his successes. For some time now, his wife Béatrice, a Canadian government minister, has been bedridden, suffering from a mysterious depression. To escape from his wife’s agony, Boris begins a relationship with a colleague, Helga, and gets close to Klara, a young woman who works as a maid in Boris’s home. The sudden appearance of a stranger in his life forces Boris to come face-to-face with the world, with everything he takes for granted, with all his certainties.

Walrus-like warden, Sven "Swede" Sorenson, a cross between Bluto and Wimpy, runs the prison, murders convicts who escape, and has the FBI on his trail in the form of agent Karen Polarski, the daughter of the town's corrupt judge. Swede's twins tell their father they're pregnant (they aren't), so he pushes their dim boyfriends, Bud and Larry, into shotgun marriages. He also turns his sons-in-law into slave labor, so Bud hatches an escape plan: to rob a train carrying old bills to the mint for burning. Larry's his reluctant accomplice. When Bud is captured and railroaded into Swede's jail, his death looks certain, until he hatches yet another plan that requires Larry's help. Written by jhailey@hotmail.com