Strike the Father Dead is the story of a son’s rebellion against the moral values and way of life represented by his father and his assertion of his right to determine his own destiny. It covers a period of approximately seventeen years, from the time that Jeremy Coleman, as a seventeen-year-old boy, runs away from home to live his own life. The novel is told principally from three different first-person points of view, those of the father, Alfred Coleman, his sister Eleanor, and the son.

The novel opens with Alfred reflecting on the humiliating situation of having a son who has rejected him. His colleagues have been kind, but he feels the odor of scandal settling about him and the family name. The narrative is then taken up by Eleanor, as she recalls the fateful Sunday when an article appeared in a cheap newspaper, showing Jeremy playing the piano in what the paper described as a den of vice in London.

The narrative now passes to Jeremy, looking back as a mature man on his feelings and his actions just before he ran away from home. He tells of one eventful evening in which he made his first visit to a dance hall, became drunk for the first time, attempted to seduce a woman, and got involved in a fight. He came home late, bruised, to his aunt’s sympathy and his father’s stern but reasoned disapproval. The rift between them had for some time been wide: Alfred lived according to strict standards of duty, hard work, and service to others and could not understand his son’s waywardness. After this episode, Jeremy goes through a temporary phase of self-pity and self-disgust, coupled with intense religious emotion.

His decision to run away from home is precipitated by an adventure at a local farm, where he had cycled one summer afternoon while playing truant from school. The exhilaration of this burst of freedom changes him irrevocably, and instead of returning to school he travels to London and finds a job as a dishwasher and later as a piano player, in a seedy club. He makes friends with an amiable and amusing con man called Tim, whose free and easy lifestyle he tries to imitate. His musical ambltlons recelve a boost when he meets Percy Brett, a black American serviceman who is an expert trombone player. Percy inspires Jeremy’s own playing to heights he had never before reached. He begins to live only for jazz.

Back at home, Eleanor makes herself ill with distress, but Alfred sees no best to rear Jeremy wisely, but if his son chose to tread the wrong path, that was his affair. Eleanor, however, manages to send Jeremy a message, and Jeremy, stung by his conscience, makes a brief but unproductive visit home; father and son are so entrenched in their respective positions that no communication between them is possible.

Jeremy’s life continues in the artistic, boozy, twilight London world he has chosen. His career advances, he travels to Paris, and his band eventually gets a chance to visit the United States. At this moment, Tim’s wife and two children, whom Tim has callously deserted, turn up on Jeremy’s doorstep. Jeremy is furious with Tim, and their friendship ends in a bitter quarrel.

This event has a traumatic effect on Jeremy. He loses interest in going to the United States and returns to London, believing that everything he has been doing up to that point has been a lie or a mistake. For the next ten years, his life stagnates, and he recovers only through a chance meeting with...