In London 25-year-old Alan King receives an unexpected birthday legacy from his late father, a professor of archaeology who disappeared in mysterious circumstances eight years before at a ziggurat in Iraq. The gift is a grimoire - a book of magic - written, unbelievably, in his father's hand. Alan is a diligent student of advanced experimental physics with a brilliant scientific mind and finds it hard to come to terms with his father's seeming interest in medieval methods of summoning archangels. More worrying still is that the name of Lucifer heads the list.