Arriving by ship at a provincial town in an unnamed Latin American country, they find that accommodation is sparse, and so Mrs Slade agrees to share a room with her at some seedy hotel for just one night.

This is when Dr and Mrs Slade make the acquaintance of Grove Soto, a charming and seemingly rich young man who offers them his hospitality.

As Soto cannot be certain about Mrs Slade's complete ignorance of the crime, he extends his hospitality, invites them to his farm in the country and eggs them on to stay there longer than they have planned.

At the same time, with the help of both his local household staff and his seventeen-year-old Cuban lover Luchita, he feeds them a cocktail of drugs whose effects, including partial amnesia, the innocent Americans mistake for the symptoms of a heavy virus infection, recovery from which is supposedly slow.

He achieves this effect through the use of a pitiless, flat, matter-of-fact style, almost toneless, that withholds emotion even at the crucial junctures...In Up Above the World Mr. Bowles performs like a musician who has fallen in love with one tune which he plays magnificently, but over and over again.