Paul is a novelist who rents out a secluded cottage in the British countryside in order to complete his new book, a pretentious sex romp. Plagued by recurring paranoid nightmares, he has split with his girlfriend Suzanne and is having problems writing his book. He employs a secretary, Linda to type the manuscript for him. He meets her at the railway station, where she is intimidated by a couple of youths, prompting Paul to give them a battering. After settling into the house, Linda takes a walk in a field where she is raped by the youths but soon gets revenge when she shoots them both with a shotgun. Meanwhile, Paul keeps having nightmares and all his advances on Linda are rejected. She insinuates herself into the household, displacing the housekeeper, Mrs. Aston. When a suspicious Mrs. Aston returns to the house at night, she is murdered: her throat slashed with a knife. As he and Linda work on completing the novel, he asks Suzanne to come back only to have Linda seduce her. As they have sex, Paul then crashes his car into a river, the brakes having been tampered with. Suzanne is murdered in the shower and everything erupts into a pandemonium of violence.