A dark, even bleak, novel, Let It Come Down follows American Nelson Dyar as he arrives in the International Zone of Tangier, Morocco to begin a new job and a new life.

Dyar's exploration of the brothels, drugs and unsavoury characters of Tangier leads him gradually, logically, to a sinister conclusion.

Bowles took the book's title from Macbeth III.3, just before Banquo is murdered: The author has described the line as an ‘admirable four-word sentence, succinct and brutal’.

By the time the book was published, Tangier had become a fully Moroccan city, but before that, and in the setting of the novel, it was an International Zone which is seen as a melting-pot for many diverse and unconventional elements.

Dyar, who has little personality of his own, tries to indulge his instincts by exploring the seedier side of the city; but, because he does not fully understand the limits or standards of the society he is in, he is unable to stop himself from going too far.