Roger Norton Vane is dead. Twenty years ago he went for a walk in the Thai jungle with his partner and never returned. After years of wild speculation and fruitless searches, finally his death is to be made official and somebody will inherit his accumulated wealth.

Ethelred Tressider, crime writer and Vane's biographer, attends the memorial service, but little does he expect to find himself talking to Vane himself, apparently returned from the dead. Chaos ensues and while trying to complete the biography it becomes clear that many people wish the man calling himself Vane had stayed dead, and that his anecdotes had died with him...