Written in 1925, the novel opens with three gentleman friends lawyer Sir Edward Leithen, banker John Palliser-Yeates, and Cabinet member Charles Lord Lamancha discovering that they all suffer a common and debilitating malady, a loss of zest for life, all desperate to relieve the ennui that has engulfed them. The solution can only be something devilish, with a dash of daring. Enlisting the aid of another friend, Scottish landowner Sir Archibald Roylance, the trio contrives a plot to poach game deer or salmon from the hereditary lands of three of Archies Highland neighbors under the guise of an assumed false identity, John Macnab. On this, they stake their reputations and the danger proves innervating. This novel is a light interlude within the Leithen Stories series an evocative look at the hunting, shooting and fishing lifestyle in Highland Scotland.