Following the end of the First World War Richard Hannay， the hero of John Buchan s The Thirty-Nine Steps， Greenmantle and Mr Standfast， has retired to the Cotswolds with his wife and young son. There， news comes to him of three kidnappings and a plot of political and financial magnitude that would shake the world. Hannay abandons his Gloucestershire idyll to counter the threat， and the adventure takes him from the frenetic dance-halls and high society of 1920 s London to a gripping climax in the wild Scottish Highlands where he meets his most formidable enemy.