They think you deliberately choose your fate. As for the theory of human existence that underlies this - more or less - glamorous scene-swelling, Max is adamant that 'People judge you too readily. Happily his self-confidence is soon restored by an introduction to the inner circle of the Nazi party, a raving affair with Röhm and a series of lubriciously rendered encounters with 'Alf' himself.

Wafted into the dictatorial presence, he recalls that 'I had felt this way only in the presence of Hollywood's greatest producers.' Monitoring the ant-hill purpose of this steel-and-chrome fascist state, 'I felt I was involved in a vast Hollywood epic in which the star really was Mussolini and the people of Italy played the extras.' Sent on an undercover mission to Munich, he discovers that the chief has thrown him over, having taken a fancy to Miss B. To Pyat, the parallels between his current day-job and a past life on the Burbank lots seem inescapable. Sure enough, Pyat is rapidly installed as Mussolini's 'minister of overseas development', with a brief to construct prototypes of the 'land leviathan' whose bulk and firepower will guarantee Il Duce's African conquests. Here, Miranda Butter, the American journalist picked up along the trail, assures him 'you will be able to fulfil your destiny'.

Opening on the train to Casablanca in 1930, in the wake of some very dodgy near eastern encounters, it swiftly transfers 'Professor Peters', his film reels and his case of documents to Italy. As may already have become apparent, The Vengeance of Rome - the final volume in a quartet begun as long ago as 1981 - is historical picaresque on the grand scale, a vast and intermittently rambling chronicle of tall tales, brief encounters and expert twitches on the thread of destiny.

Michael morecock