Ben Jonson is a doctor in Richmond, London. Life is peachy, perhaps the only cloud on his horizon is communicating with his incomprehensible housemaid. And then a roast chicken appears out of nowhere. Ben Jonson never wanted to save the world. But with no warning, no final demand and certainly no invitations issued, Ben finds himself racing against time, the Russian Mafia and spooks aplenty. Driven to near-insanity by auto-manifesting incongruities, Ben is launched into a journey across Europe in search of the source of his problems by the charismatic Lysander Cullinane, the head of a shadowy government agency that specialises in telling awful lies. Enter a catsuited blonde bombshell with a death fetish, a life insurance salesman on the run and some wickedly nasty Russians with very big guns. Add the world's most effective computer virus, an imperious old lady with a gimlet eye, England's most evil-tempered policeman and a dead man with a number of highly developed personality disorders. And then pop in a splash of sex worker with legs all the way up to the bottom of her basque. The body count rises hourly and Ben's on the run. But you can't escape space...