In a nightworld where decomposing corpse-assassins stalk their prey, Marty Strauss, the bodyguard to a famous industrialist, discovers that someone is coming to collect the soul of his employer as payment for an ancient debt.
The Screwtape Letters is a satirical Christian apologetics novel written in epistolary style by C. S. Lewis, first published in book form in February 1942. The story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior "tempter" named Wormwood, so as to advise him on methods of securing the damnation of a British man, known only as "the Patient". The Screwtape Letters is one of Lewis' most popular works, although he claimed that it was "not fun" to write, and "resolved never to write another 'Letter'."
The novel opens in a post-apocalyptic Southern California, in a hellish world shattered by nuclear war decades before. Several surviving police states have emerged in place of the former USA. Hurricane-force winds above five hundred feet prevent any sort of air travel from one state to the next, and sudden, violent, and unpredictable storms make day-to-day life a mini-hell. Hell Tanner, an imprisoned killer, is offered a full pardon in exchange for taking on a suicide mission - a drive through "Damnation Alley" across a ruined America from Los Angeles to Boston — as one of three vehicles attempting to deliver urgently needed plague vaccine.
