London, October 28, 1982. At a packed Hammersmith Odeon, Iron Maiden is about to perform in a critical concert: will the fans welcome the new singer? But more importantly, will the protests against the ‘satanic’ album The Number of the Beast happen again? Death looms: Liam and Rose – members of an extremist Catholic sect – are there, loaded with explosives, to carry out a massacre.

Six weeks earlier, the Thames returns the body of reporter Luke Wilkinson. “Suicide,” the Yard’s top brass decree, but Inspector Andrew Briggs, Luke’s former schoolmate, won’t have it. Working alone, he retraces the last months of his friend’s life, but the more he investigates, the more complicated the puzzle becomes: what connects Luke’s death and the attack at the concert? In a succession of plot twists, intertwined between past and present along the London-United States axis, a vast and ruthless network is discovered, willing to do anything in the name of God. And why will Iron Maiden be the key to solving the mystery?