In the enchanted city of Turai, the royal family is corrupt, the politicians can be bought, and the civil guards have better things to do than guarding. Thraxas, the overweight and somewhat disreputable private eye working out of an even more disreputable neighborhood, has often grumbled about that sorry state of affairs. Unfortunately, the state of affairs has suddenly gotten much worse, and Thraxas has more to worry about than where his next meal and beer are coming from. The city is under siege by an army of rampaging Orcs, and now he not only has to regularly take part in standing guard duty on the stout walls, the only thing between the Orcs and Turais destruction, but he also has a mystery to solve. A ship has managed to slip past the hordes of Orcs and made port in Turai. It was carrying a powerful magical talisman called the Ocean Storm which, used by the enemy, could raise a storm powerful enough to topple the city walls and let the Orcs in to pillage and slaughter. And it, along with the captain of the ship, mysteriously disappeared as soon as the ship had docked. If Thraxas doesnt locate the Ocean Storm before it falls into the wrong hands, Turai will be doomed. Which could seriously interfere with the big card game that Thraxas had been looking forward to. . . .

Martin Scott is the pseudonym under which Martin Millar writes his humorous fantasy adventures about Thraxas the sybaritic overweight private eye and man of action in a fantasy world of elves, Orcs, and mean streets. There are six Thraxas novels in print, with a seventh soon to be published. The Guardian has praised the series as blindingly funny, deeply subversive, while SFX calls Thraxas a pulp fiction hero par excellence. Martin Millar, under his own name, has written several mainstream novels, such as, The Good Fairies of New York, Love and Peace with Melody Paradise, and his newest novel, Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me, which The Guardian called brilliant and the London Times praised as one of the few great rock novels. Millar has been compared to Kurt Vonnegut and Armistead Maupin, and The Edinburgh Times calls him one of Britains most gifted underground writers. Originally from Glasgow, Scotland, he lives in London, England in a flat filled with videos of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.