'The first concern of an author is to do down his colleagues.'In the long, hot Roman summer of AD 74, Falco, private informer and spare-time poet, gives a reading for his family and friends. A visit to the Chrysippus scriptorium implicates Falco in a gruesome literary murder, so when commissioned to...

'The first concern of an author is to do down his colleagues.'In the long, hot Roman summer of AD 74, Falco, private informer and spare-time poet, gives a reading for his family and friends. A visit to the Chrysippus scriptorium implicates Falco in a gruesome literary murder, so when commissioned to investigate, Falco is forced to accept.