PAUL SAVIDENT: Suicide Kings - West End dates to be announced

Charlie Bennett is not a man to mess around. He is a New York mobster, a gangland boss, and he runs a deadly business. But he maintains that he has now 'retired' from his life of violence and crime - as he puts it, he has gone 'legit'.

Then one evening he is joined at his table at his favourite bar by five young City yuppies, of whom he knows a couple of their fathers. What could be more harmless than a simple drink with a few friends? And that's when his trouble begin! The next thing he knows, Charlie awakes to find he is a hostage, in an unknown house, and bound to a chair. Calm, but enraged, he points out that they have each signed their own death warrants. If they release him, and let him go, he will be 'leniant'.

But they explain that Elise, the girlfriend of one of them, and sister of another, has been kidnapped. They don't know who by, but they have already received one of her fingers... severed, and in a box! They can’t raise the ransom money... but they know that Charlie can, and he also has the underworld connections to track down the kidnappers and get the girl back alive. But why, Charlie asks, should he help them? It's simple, they say, because for every injury done to her, they will do the same to him... and they have already started... it is only then, through his drugged-up haze, he notices the pain...

A major Hollywood star name

and a West End theatre will shortly be announced.