When fire breaks out during the West End opening of a revival of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, not all the spectators are bustled out of The Kemble's auditorium... The Prime Minister's son Nigel Hastings, two cast members and seven spectators are taken hostage by New METRO, a group militating in favour of London's homeless. With the theatre under siege, one of the hostages - a Gulf War veteran - breaks through the theatre basement into a neighbouring vault that houses valuable works of art. But when Nigel and two other captives take up the challenge of cracking the code to an enigmatic casket discovered in the vault, they trigger an unprecedented chain of discoveries. What starts out as a headline-grabbing crisis quickly descends into the discovery of an ancient codex, one which holds explosive consequences for Judaism, Christianity and Islam by purporting to invalidate the very foundations of these three religions. But with the theatre under siege, it is not long before the inevitable countdown to the bloody finale to a plot unscripted by the playwright... Taking its cue from a range of contemporary writers, notably Tom Stoppard, Paul Auster and Ian McEwan, The Khazar Codex will appeal to readers who enjoy the twists and turns of enigmatic, thriller fiction combined with deeper existential questions.