The unbidden guest is ever a pest... Frank Grinder has retired from practice as a solicitor in Hong Kong and is now living in Cheltenham with his attractive, much younger Chinese wife, Winnie. He realises that he is bored and decides to write a book, recording the things that he finds irritating. His attempts to do so are interrupted by the arrival of his wife's family for a holiday and the resultant trouble in which his naive nephew lands himself. Meanwhile, through the agency of a South African private detective, he inadvertently becomes drawn into a supposed industrial espionage conspiracy, which is, itself, beset by mistaken identities. This is a very funny book, with a fast plot and a host of amusing characters, including an irritating and verbose vicar, a Russian botanist and a Brummie cafe owner, whose idiosyncrasies of speech are cleverly captured.