Maxie's in trouble! Again. Only, this time it's serious. Driving a stolen Ferrari Testarossa off a motorway flyover at something approaching Mach 1, with the police in hot pursuit, is no way to make old bones. But it's child's play to what follows.
For Maxie, small-time thief and general low-life, has crashed into the Spiral, a strange whirlpool of time and space, where, it seems, almost anything can happen, and anyone appear.
The two Elizabethan alchemists, for instance, who are convinced that Maxie can help them with their magickal endeavours. And the swashbuckling band of spectral pirates who promise Maxie power and riches beyond his wildest dreams - if only he'll join them.
Michael Scott Rohan is the author of nine fantasy and science fiction novels, and co-author of three more, as well as several non-fiction books. After many years in Oxford and Yorkshire, he and his American wife Deborah now live in a small village near Cambridge, next to the pub.