Thomas Mistler has always thought himself “a happy man, as the world goes.” A scion of old money, he made his own fortune in advertising and is now poised to sell the company he founded for a fabulous price. But when a medical examination reveals the presence in his liver of a fatal intruder, “preposterously, unmistakably, he begins to rejoice,” with a feeling of having been set free. But free from what?
He will seek the answer surreptitiously, without revealing his illness to his family, during a last repri…
