The preface includes a diagram of the Yale campus, which is helpful in visualizing where events take place, an excerpt from Cole Porter's Anything Goes suggesting what will happen in the novel is unpredictable, and a note from a perpetrator with specific instructions about what our unknown recipients should do.

A young man steps out of the "Tomb" on Yale's campus with a bomb wrapped around his body demanding that the cell towers be turned back on in five minutes. Christine Carmody, the local hostage negotiator watches time expire and the hostage explode in front of her eyes. Federal authorities are called to the scene and a full scale hostage situation complete with helicopter surveillance, snipers, and the requisite media blitz ensues.

Meanwhile, Sam Purdy, on suspension from the Boulder Police Department for professional misconduct, flies to Miami for the engagement party of his soon-to-be stepdaughter Dulce since his soon-to-be wife is pregnant with his soon-to be child and cannot make the trip. Unaccustomed to high society, Sam meets Ann Calderone, the millionaire wife and mother of the groom, on a yacht. Ann hands Sam a note which was left in her purse in North Carolina where she works as a geophysicist.

When her daughter Jane Calderone, who attends Yale and was to be "tapped" by one of the secret societies at the college, does not call about her forthcoming trip to Miami, Ann enlists Sam's help and flies him to New Haven on a chartered jet.

Deirdre Drake, (Dee) a CIA analyst and Christopher Poe, an FBI agent have been having an affair for many years which is consummated during the annual counter-terrorism conference. Poe suffers from PTSD after losing his wife and child in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Poe is convinced that all of the hostages will be executed and flies to New Haven on his own.

Sam, Dee and Poe eventually join forces and try to rescue the students held hostage in the Greek style building with no windows. The hostages include the children of the Secretary of the Army and a Supreme Court Justice. The terrorist has no rules, no demands, and will not negotiate.

The Siege literally starts off with a bang but drags in the middle and fizzles at the end when White becomes much too preachy. The premise of an intellectual terrorist is unique but the novel jumps around too much from the past to present tense. While the premise is excellent and original, it's too bad that The Siege doesn't live up to its premise.

--Jerry Solot