As far as its premise is concerned, El accidente [The Accident] resembles the author's earlier work, Las mujeres de Héctor, since the main driver of the plot is once again an accidental murder, this time of an old man called Emilio. However, in this later narrative, the haunting that follows is not of the paranormal variety, but a combination of guilt, fear, and indecision on the psychological level, plus a flesh-and-blood haunting of the culprit, named Fernando, by the victim's sons, who intimidate him with their repetition of the proverb ‘Quien a hierro mata, a hierro muere’ [Live by the sword, die by the sword]. Fernando is the friend and would-be suitor of Berta, the main focus of the narrative and narrator of alternate chapters and the deed takes place at a New Year's Eve house party, when in a somewhat inebriated state, he punches the elderly street musician who had entered the courtyard of the house uninvited and been reluctant to leave as soon as he was asked. Emilio suffers a fatal blow to his head as he falls against a stone bench. The aftermath of this death (as in Las mujeres de Héctor) dominates the rest of the plot: what to do with the body, to whom to tell or not to tell the true story – the police, the defence lawyer, the man's relations, others in the village – fears of the consequences, tensions created and changes in the social dynamics within the group of friends due to differences in reaction and opinion over how to handle the affair. The end of the short novel (117 pages) appears to bring closure: Fernando and the whole group are acquitted, thanks to a brilliant lawyer engaged by Berta (A, p. 109); the same group of friends celebrate the following New Year's Eve in the same country house together; Berta and the friend she has been attracted to all along, Alberto, consolidate their relationship; Emilio's sons are persuaded by Berta to stop intimidating him.

However, the semblance of neat and simple plotting that this summary suggests is misleading. Despite its brevity, El accidente, is complex both in its narrative forms and in its use of sub-plotting and narrative blind alleys. Briefly, these can be enumerated as follows.