When his Oxford friend Pitt-Heron disappears, the London barrister Edward Leithen begins a wild-goose chase that leads to the courteous, bespectacled Andrew Lumley, a collector of rare books who heads a secret network aimed at the collapse of civilisation. Leithen soon finds that in London’s familiar streets he is as hunted as any fugitive.
Buchan’s first Leithen story, a compact thriller with a celebrated meditation on how thin the crust of civilisation is. Download the free EPUB.