Neil O'Netty, a successful young historical novelist, is enjoying a leisurely driving tour through the rugged countryside and ancient hill towns of eastern Italy, when he is forced to seek assistance at a remote farmhouse. There he meets the beautiful Marisa, and her elderly relatives. What starts out as a brief idyllic interlude in his journey soon blossoms into a fierce, all-consuming affair with Marisa. So intense is his passion for her, so complete the spell she casts over him, that Neil scarcely has the time or interest to consider the disturbing and mysterious signs around him—the vast decrepit house itself, with its hidden rooms and passageways, the bizarre sounds that echo through it, the gunshot in the night—that form the physical and spiritual maze in which he finds himself. Marisa's defiant and deathless eroticism is the thread that leads Neil into the nightmarish center of the labyrinth and propels the story to its shocking and unforgettable conclusion. Father Panic's Opera Macabre is a tour de force, elegant, seductive and utterly compelling, a total experience. It is something completely new in horror literature.