After being arrested for the murder of Dreverhaven, the important and feared town bailiff, the young lawyer Katadreuffe remembers the events leading up to the crime through flashbacks which reveal the victim to be his father. Set in 1920's Rotterdam, the story follows Dreverhaven as he exercised his tyrannical power by forcing people from their homes while Katadreuffe grew up by taking refuge in books, cultivating a desire to make something of himself.