Beirut is buzzing with rumours. sami hassan, a retired lebanese warlord, has a cache of gold sovereigns secreted in a war-shattered building due for re-development... but which one! he's lost the whereabouts of its location... but fragmented clues exist. when john, an english architect, stumbles on the treasure trove during a survey, big ideas materialise... but will sami and his hapless henchman, omar, get there first? join them in the chase of this slightly absurd tale of helter-skelter through the magical and exotic byways of lebanon... and beyond. wonderful humour marks this delightful novel of punctured pomposity and frustrated greed. john woods-meakin is a chartered surveyor who, with his wife and young family lived in beirut in the early 1970s until the onset of the lebanese civil war. they returned to england where they remained for many happy years in the old family home, at guildford, surrey. it was in the mid-1990s that, seizing an opportunity, he returned with his wife to beirut. his son and daughter make frequent visits to their childhood haunts although they are both happily married and live in london.