Set in 1953, this story revolves around the terrible secret of 161 Radpole Road, which is ruled by the wheelchair-bound Ilse Lamprey. Although the eponymous Dr. Gruber emerges early in this novel to eat pork chops and pig's innards with a middle-European countess who pays for his meal out of her dwindling supply of diamonds, his daughter appears much later, to turn a story already dense with innuendo into a tale of intrigue. The girl, who calls herself Vera, comes to live in a cottage presided over by Ilse Lamprey, who loathes the illegal immigrants she is forced to take in as lodgers but daren't expose herself and her secret to a more venturesome clientele. Ilse is attended by Babakov, a half-demented slavey who owes her his life but who willingly relinquishes his duties to Vera. Ilse's food immediately becomes tastier, an eventuality that, considering that the girl resembles a woman long since dead, dulls Ilse's appetite. Vera is never idle: she extorts payment from the men she seduces, commits a murder and at every opportunity climbs up to the attic on a mysterious mission. Eventually, however, she becomes the victim of her own evil. After a complicated, sometimes hilarious, always absorbing series of events, Vera and Dr. Gruber's identities are revealed in the pages of Ilse's confession.