Seven Keys to Baldpate

Summary

In an audacious display of literary bravado, playwright William Hallowell Magee, portrayed with a characteristic blend of earnestness and exasperation, enters into a rather peculiar wager with a confidant. The challenge: to conjure a complete 10,000-word novel within the confines of a mere twenty-four hours. To facilitate this Herculean task, the friend grants Magee exclusive access to the Baldpate Inn, a grand, isolated edifice ostensibly shuttered for the entire winter season, promising an unparalleled sanctuary of solitude conducive to intense creative output. However, the promise of hermetic peace swiftly dissolves into a maelstrom of bewildering encounters. What begins as an idyllic retreat for a literary sprint rapidly devolves into a labyrinthine comedy of errors and burgeoning menace, as a bizarre procession of individuals, each inexplicably possessing their own set of keys to the supposedly deserted inn, begins to materialize. These unexpected interlopers, ranging from enigmatic women with ulterior motives to shadowy figures with more sinister designs, transform Magee's tranquil writing haven into a veritable stage for an unfolding melodrama, blurring the lines between the fiction he strives to create and the increasingly outlandish reality he is forced to inhabit. The writer, initially a detached observer of his own creative process, finds himself inextricably entangled in a web of intrigue, mistaken identities, and escalating chaos, forcing him to confront whether his narrative is merely an imaginative exercise or a chilling premonition of his own bewildering circumstances.

Synopsis

A writer bets a friend that he can write a 10,000-word novel in 24 hours. The friends takes the bet, and gives him the keys to his Baldpate Inn, which has been closed for the winter, so he can write in complete seclusion. Things start heating up, though, when a succession of people who also have keys to the inn begin showing up.