The plot of Printer's Error centres around the imminent publication in a limited edition of a scandalously anti-Semitic book - The Open-Bellied Mountain - by the printing house of Saxant and Senss, and the work's author - Fortinbras Carn - soon finds himself the victim of a series of threatening and anonymous letters; threats which have to be taken deadly seriously when the author's wife dies in mysterious circumstances. Mrs. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley is soon drawn into a mystery as bizarre and as baffling as any that she has encountered during her long and illustrious career and, ably assisted by her energetic nephew Carey, and by the young and enterprising solicitor to the author's family - Mr. Justus Bassin - she finds herself battling Nazi spies, nudists, and gun-toting motor-cyclists in equal number, whilst unmasking the reason behind a sudden craze for wearing false beards, not to mention discovering the origin of several dismembered human body parts, before eventually arriving at the case's surreal climax.