Ever since Satan got Adam and Eve thrown out of the Garden of Eden, he's been spoiling for the apocalypse. And it could be coming. Bernadette Callahan, an agent in a mysterious government organization, is trailing a serial killer with seemingly supernatural abilities (ahem) and must call on religious historian Sebastian "Batty" LaLaurie for help. Clues in their hunt come from the Bible and Milton's Paradise Lost. The publisher is quick to point out that film and foreign rights were sold on the basis of the idea alone, plus a writing sample, suggesting in-house hopefulness for this debut by screenwriter Browne.

Milton's Paradise Lost provides the backdrop for Browne's riveting, cinematic novel, which charts an epic battle between good and evil. When saint-like pop singer Gabriela Zuada is found burned to a crisp in her dressing room after a performance in São Paulo, Brazil, on the last night of her Glory Revealed World Tour, Bernadette Callahan, field agent for the top-secret government spy agency known as Section, investigates. After other horribly burned bodies surface, Milton scholar Sebastian "Batty" LaLaurie persuades Bernadette that Gabriela's demise is no ordinary murder. Indeed, Beelzebub, Belial, Moloch, and Mammon—a quartet of fallen angels who appropriate human "skins" as a disguise—are behind the deaths as well as an unholy plot to release Satan to rule over humankind. Only the archangel Michael and his band of puny but courageous humans can defeat the demons. The author, who also writes as Robert Gregory Browne (Down Among the Dead Men), offers consistently smart prose and an ending that points to future thrillers set in this fascinating world. (July)