In the theatre of death only evil reigns supreme. During the Festival of Death in Rome, four American art students go missing. One of the students is eventually found dead, horribly mutilated as if by wild beasts inside the Colosseum. One year later, Nick Thorn is sent by the New Sanctuary to help the father of one of the missing students, a desperate man who is still looking for his daughter. The New Sanctuary believes that Thorn has a psychic ability, a 'special gift' that could help him; Thorn however has always denied such a thing, claiming it to be pure nonsense and probably the product of an overactive imagination instigated by his drinking problem. Shortly after Thorn arrives in Rome, the Festival of Death begins again and another of the missing students is gruesomely murdered. It is now a race against time to find the other two. Can Thorn find and save the remaining two students or will Mania the Roman Goddess of Death succeed in devouring their souls and satisfy the blood lust of her followers? "Richard Valanga writes about the Afterlife like nobody else today, he's the 21st-century Dante of the North." - Tony Barrell, The Sunday Times