When bookshop owner Marty Applegate inadvertently sells the most effective grimoire Hell ever released, it’s soon passing through the hands of a society of inept sorcerers and magicians. At last, weird and wacky wannabes have a means of unleashing all their bizarre pet projects. Anything goes, and the world is plunged into chaos of the most zany kind. From Aztec mummies to killer dachshunds to giant creatures right of Japanese science fiction films the world’s in chaos.

Satan’s not pleased. It’s not the subtle, insidious conflict he usually brews, so he sends word to the book shop owner. Get the book back, or it’ll cost his soul.

But he can have a bit of help from Crimson, one of Hell’s most sultry lost souls, who gets hand-picked by Satan’s lecherous goat-horned assistant, Baalberith. She’s right out of Hell’s gym of eternal jazzercise and ready to give a hand.

Soon it’s apparent that even a little more assistance is going to be needed, so a private eye, Phil Chandler, who’s not clear whether he’s in the real world or a classic noir film, gets called in to assist. He’s capable, but he won’t stop narrating his own moves! Can the trio find the grimoire and stop the mad wizard Caduceus in time?