[1] The novel is credited to Leslie Charteris, who created the Saint in 1928, but the book was actually authored by Fleming Lee and is adapted from a teleplay by John Kruse written for a two-part episode of The Saint, "The Fiction Makers",[1] which first aired in December 1968 and was later released as a theatrical film.

Simon Templar is hired by a friend in the book publishing trade to protect one of his authors, a secretive recluse called Amos Klein who writes a popular series of spy novels.

He discovers that she is "Amos Klein", a woman who adopted a male pen name to increase sales of her novels.

The pair are soon kidnapped by a group of people who claim to be members of S.W.O.R.D., the evil organization from Amos Klein's novels.

Their leader, "Warlock", the mastermind of the group, mistakenly assumes that Simon Templar is Amos Klein and that the woman is his secretary.