Locked in a high-tech English manor and bound in a deadly duel of wits, Andrew Wyke and Milo Tindle have come together as English gentlemen to discuss the matter of Wyke's wife. She is the woman both men are sleeping with. But as wit becomes wicked and clever becomes cutthroat, Wyke and Tindle's game of one-upmanship spirals out of control, escalating in a chess match that can have only one outcome. Someone will be murdered.