In Greene`s comic novel a staid middle-aged man has his life confused and rearranged by his freewheeling elderly aunt. Pulling, a retired bank manager and a bachelor, has the simplest expectations when he agrees to a holiday on the Continent with Aunt Augusta, but his expectations are not the equal of hers. Augusta, despite her demure and respectable facade, is not only a bohemian and a libertine, but an arms smuggler and secret agent as well. Their trip becomes more and more elaborate, leading from London to Istanbul to Paraguay, where Pulling finds himself dragged into a succession of intrigues that he could hardly have even imagined several weeks before.