The Bishop is based loosely around the game of chess but essentially it deals with the people involved in this particular microcosm of society and the clash that occurs when three different cultures collide - the American, the British and the Australian. Madison Chatfield, a New York journalist whose career has stalled after a regrettable incident in the office when she is sent off on a graveyard assignment to England. Thanks to her unwavering ambition and her eye for a scoop, she meets up with Tobias Byron, the reigning champion; a reclusive but very opinionated Englishman and Gary Bridgewater, a young, laid-back Australian who flaunts all the establishment rules but, who is in fact the future of the game. The story follows these three characters through the relationships they strike up with each other - thanks primarily to the game which takes them from England to Boston and New York and then back again to the UK - and is sprinkled with a healthy dose of pertinent political and social commentary as it makes its way - via the inevitable betrayal of trust - towards its rather unexpected conclusion.