It is 1919 and the Great War has come to a close. But in the shadows of
the world's major cities, the killing has just begun. In this perilous
time, as the division between order and chaos grows increasingly slim, a
select group of visionaries have taken it upon themselves to ensure the
safety of humanity. They are known as the Arcanum.
In London's stormy Hyde Park, Konstantin Duvall, the Arcanum's founder,
has been killed in a suspicious accident. Dismayed, the group's
longest-lived member, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, determines to avenge
Duvall's death--and uncover the secret left in his wake. For the dead
man possessed the world's most powerful--now missing--artifact: the Book
of Enoch, the chronicle of God's mistakes, within whose pages lie the
seeds for the end of everything.
From the scene of the crime, Conan Doyle embarks on a path that leads
him to the sleazy underworld of New York City's Bowery and a series of
deceptively disparate--but decidedly connected--murders. And as he calls
upon the scattered members of the Arcanum for aid, he also finds himself
embroiled in a story of war as old as time itself. Not of a struggle
between countries, but between darkness and light.
Peopled with the twentieth century's most famous--and infamous--figures,
here is an extraordinary tale in which the stakes go beyond the realm of
humankind--into the divine.