Flying Too High, set in Melbourne, Australia in the 1920s, features fictional detective Phryne Fisher as she attempts to resolve a homicide case as well as solve the kidnapping of a small child.

Despite this warning, the father is murdered soon after, and Phyrne, along with her friends, Cec and Bert, her maid, Dot and fellow pilot Bunji Ross, attempt to help Melbourne's Detective Inspector Jack Robinson solve the crime.

Having established herself as a private detective in Melbourne and solved a number of cases after the events in Cocaine Blues, Phryne Fisher is engaged by Mrs. William McNaughton to investigate a family dispute.

Phryne purchases some of Amelia's sketches, commissions a painting from her, and locates Mr. William McNaughton's will, which allows an inheritance to his wife and daughter on the condition that they do not marry.

Phryne convinces Amelia McNaughton to have a small party and invite the local children that she occasionally her family, Paolo Rugazzi, Detective-Inspector Benton, Bert and Cec.

Mr McNaughton, enraged by their presence on his property, went to rebuke them, resulting in their panicking and releasing the rope and stone, which swung and delivered a blow that killed him.

Candida slips out of her house without her parents' knowledge to buy sweets at a shop down the road, but is abducted on her way home by strangers in a black car.

After receiving a ransom message from the kidnappers, Henry Maldon is persuaded by his friend and fellow flying instructor Jack Leonard to ask Phryne Fisher for help.

Phryne enlists the help of Detective Inspector Jack Robinson in tracing fingerprints on the ransom note and it is discovered that one of the sets of finger-prints belong to a man suspect of molesting children, Sidney Brayshaw.

A decoy package of newspapers disguised with some currency is used to bait the kidnappers, and Phryne straps herself to their car and leaves a trail of luminous paint behind.

Bunji Ross and Henry Maldon use a light aircraft and a torchlight to trace Phryne's trail of luminous paint, bringing them to the kidnappers' den without attracting their attention.