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. This novel is a light interlude within the Leithen Stories series an evocative look at the hunting, shooting and fishing lifestyle in Highland Scotland.
