The novel covers approximately 15–20 years of the life of film scholar Jonathan Gates, whose academic investigations draw him into the world of esoteric conspiracy that underlies the work of the fictional B movie director Max Castle.

Through Gates' extensive research and travels through Europe, the reader learns of Castle's considerable influence over the great films of his time culminating in an uncredited collaboration with Orson Welles to make the acclaimed movie Citizen Kane, followed by a failed attempt to adapt Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness to the silver screen.

Also revealed, however, are Castle's shadowy connections with a religious group known as the Orphans of the Storm, as well as his disappearance in 1941 after being lost at sea and presumed dead in a Nazi U-boat attack during a trip to Europe.

Among the up-and-coming directors Sharkey showcases is 18-year-old Simon Dunkle, creator of ultra-low budget exploitation films of unprecedented gore and remarkable popularity among young people.

Gates begins to suspect that the Orphans are using their extensive influence in the film industry to subliminally promote their religion while they enact their plans to bring about the Apocalypse in the year 2014 via biological terrorism.

Ty Burr, later film critic for The Boston Globe, reviewing the novel in 1991 for Entertainment Weekly, praised Roszak's writing: "Still best known for 1968's The Making of a Counter Culture, a book that sought to explain '60s youth to an older generation of intellectuals, the writer proves to be a spellbinder when it comes to fiction.

"[3] Producers Robert Michael Geisler and John Roberdeau (Streamers, The Thin Red Line) optioned the rights in 1998 and commissioned a screenplay by Dan O'Bannon (Alien, Total Recall), but abandoned the project due to disappointment in the script.