selling author, Sergeant Hamish Macbeth faces a string of mysterious robberies that are only the beginning of an international threat to his sleepy Scottish village of Lochdubh.

Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is worried about how the folks will react to his new assistant officer; the enigmatic American James Bland, whose true mission is to track down the members of a Russian spy network. In the meantime, he and Bland deal with it the usual crop of traffic incidents, lost wallets, lost dogs, and lost people, but a spate of burglaries committed by a man dubbed "Spiderman" give Hamish cause for serious concern.

Hamish has to use all of his contacts and every ounce of his Highland guile to find the robber and protect the village.