Saint John wrote the apocalyptic Book of Revelation over 1,900 years ago in a cave on Greece's eastern Aegean island of Patmos. But now there has been a murder. A revered monk from that holy island's thousand-year-old monastery is murdered in Patmos' town square during Easter week. Called in on the matter is Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis of Greece's Special Crimes Division. Kaldis must find the killer before all hell breaks loose—in a manner of speaking.

Kaldis' impolitic search for answers brings him face-to-face with a scandal haunting the world's oldest surviving monastic community. On the pristine Aegean peninsula of Mount Athos, isolated from the rest of humanity, twenty monasteries sit protecting the secrets of Byzantium amid a way of life virtually unchanged for more than 1,500 years. But today this sacred refuge harbors modern international intrigues that threaten to destroy the very heart of the Church—in a matter of days.