Hugh Hawksworth is an agent with British Intelligence.
The time of the three adventures we have of this highly capable operative is the first half of the 1950s. The Second World War has been over for almost a decade and the people in the cloak and dagger world have moved from watching out for Nazis to watching out for Commies. Hawksworth was one of those and and become one of the department's better operatives. Then a bullet to the leg had put an end to that. "He hadn't lost his nerve, nor had the bullet been fatal. Just damaging enough to mean he'd never pass any fitness board."
With his former career now ended because with his lame leg likely to forever bother and hamper him, Hawksworth was ready to offer his resignation and look for something else to do with his life. His Chief was having none of that. "You had a good war, and you've done excellent work since then, I grant you, but it's over. Times are changing. It's brainwork, not brawn, that we need now, and you've got plenty of brains and a trained mind."
So Hawksworth finds himself, as the first recorded adventure begins, motoring four hours out of London to the Earldom of Selchester and the old castle which was and is the seat of power in that region for it was there during the War that a large number of classified documents were sent for safety during the Blitz and it is there that the Chief believes lies the evidence of more traitors like Burgess and MacLean.
And there is the continuing mystery of what happened to the previous Earl seven years before during a blizzard to cause the older man to just vanish without a trace.