Reading the newspaper and minding his own business one morning on the "R" subway train, young John Balfour, adjunct instructor at Borough of Brooklyn Community College, picks up a (supposedly) abandoned Duane Reade shopping bag, discovering to his surprise that hidden inside is a ragged fragment of a journal written in German dating from World War II.
Contrary to his instincts telling him "not to go there," Balfour takes the manuscript home, where the hastily-scrawled words open a perilous door: the secret origins of the notorious anti-semitic forgery known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
But this first hint is merely the tip of the iceberg, as Balfour's curiosity leads him into a maelstrom of international espionage, anarchy and romance beyond his wildest imagination.
He finds himself in forbidden places -- Soviet Russia, Basque Spain, Portugal, and Israel, among others -- as well as lost in the labyrinthine byways of past eras -- absinthe-drenched Paris, the wintry homes of the Czars, spy-infested Vienna, and Weimar Germany at the birth of the Third Reich.
There will be no easy escape as death looms ever-nearer.
The 25th Protocol is a thriller combining the enigmatic puzzles of The Da Vinci Code with the breakneck pace of Robert Ludlum. And it is a cautionary tale as real as today's headlines -- reminding us that in this post-Cold War, post-modern and media-saturated world, mere history books will fail to reassure and comfort us.