THE ARCANUM

In a mostly incomprehensible debut, the creator of Sherlock Holmes musters an elite task force to beat the devil in this.

If you and your friends want to fend off Lucifer and his ever-lurking minions, you form yourselves into an ad hoc commando unit called the Arcanum, just like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his fellow novelist H.P. Lovecraft, escape king Harry Houdini, and voodoo queen Marie Laveau did. Given the first-strike capability and pitchfork-stacked arsenal of their adversary, the group’s success to date has been laudable. If they haven’t actually triumphed over Lucifer, they’ve at least kept him at bay long enough to earn semi-retirement, plus the thanks of a grateful species. But everything changes on a foggy night in London, 1919, when a Model T Ford demolishes charismatic Konstantin Duvall, who’d been the Arcanum’s Vince Lombardi. Sir Arthur realizes that the denizens of the dark are again growing restless. For one thing, the Book of Enoch—“which, along with the New and Old Testaments, form the Biblical triad”—has gone missing and needs to be recovered lest the devil and his disciples treat it infernally. The game’s afoot, he informs Lady Jean, his endlessly understanding wife, and takes himself off to New York City for reasons not entirely clear, toting his vintage detective’s satchel, complete with deerstalker and brass knuckles. Up the Arcanum, is the cry, and the devil take the hindmost!

Much ado about a sillier-than-average MacGuffin.