At the height of the Cold War, an English painter gets entangled in a web of international intrigue—one that may spell the end of the world—in a tale of suspense from one of the twentieth century’s great, underappreciated masters.

Tim Bedford is a reasonably successful landscape painter, living in London with all the creature comforts he might require. But when his dying cousin begs him to help find her missing husband, an old love of detective novels—and an itch for something more—comes to the surface. The missing man, Joe Farne, has disappeared from his post at the mysterious Arnaldous Research Institute in South America; the only clues to his whereabouts are on a scrap of paper, a list of unfamiliar names and places included with Farne’s last letter. 

Tim’s amateur attempts to pick up a trail soon put him in the crosshairs of a shadowy organization with dark plans for humankind. His moves and counter-moves will take him from high society in London and New York to an ominous scientific center in Peru, a perturbing settlement in Chile, and finally an alarming climax in the mountains of Australia, where he comes face to face with a group hell-bent on mass control and their strange and terrifying new power. Can he and the forces for good in the world stand up to it?

First published in 1961, J. B. Priestley’s cinematic and stylish thriller brilliantly evokes the paranoia of the Cold War era—and draws on a darkly prescient vision of disinformation and manipulation in the digital age.