The Most Holy Order of the Gospel of St John is a secret religious sect. It was established by Peter, the Apostle and first Pope, in the earliest days of Christianity. It exists only for one purpose. It combats the evil visited upon mankind in human guise and first warned of in the Lazarus Prophecy.

Lazarus was a sinner, judged and found wanting and the real miracle was not that Christ restored him to life, but that He returned him from hell. Lazarus came back though with a dire warning about Lucifer's plans for humanity.

Demons will visit the earth. They will undermine hope and destroy faith and bring chaos. The last of them - at the End of Days - will be the Devil's own progeny. And he will deliver the Apocalypse.

That's the basic set-up of the novel I finished writing in the summer and now plan to get up on Kindle at the beginning of the year. Though there's a lot more to it, obviously.

For one thing the Order isn't the formidable religious force it was when Peter set it up; it has shrunk and dwindled, sabotaged by Church reform in an age which sees devils only as metaphors for wickedness.

There's a serial killer loose in London police have dubbed The Scholar because of his habit of daubing blasphemous messages in ancient languages at the scenes of his crimes.

There's a far-right political group called The Knights of Excalibur, shrewd at manipulating an increasingly restless public mood.

And there's a link between The Scholar and a gambler named Edmund Caul who vanished from Victorian London as abruptly as he appeared there after a few memorably bloody months in 1888.

At the heart of the story there's the hard-pressed woman police detective leading the hunt to catch The Scholar. There's the young theologian she presses into assisting and there's a very reluctant psychic.

It's not for me to say whether this is a good novel, that will be for its readers to decide. I think, though, that it's the best I've done and it was certainly the one I've most enjoyed writing. The scale is large and the themes weighty and I liked the central characters (even the one you're very definitely not supposed to).

There isn't a Most Holy Order of The Gospel of St John, by the way, I made it up. Though to my ears, it sounds as though there could be.

The Lazarus Prophecy will appear as an Audible audiobook, available for download through Amazon, for those who prefer to listen to their fiction. I'll update with a release date as soon as I have one.