He is poisoning me. I saw it in his eyes before we sailed, despite the smile on his lips: 'It's only a fever, Virgil. And you deserve it for traipsing off to Greece without telling me. What made you think the poem needed three years' editing, you beetroot?' It is as artificial as it sounds, this bluff heartiness and rustic eccentricity of language. Like so many of his amiable qualities it serves a very practical purpose. Octavian is nothing if not a pragmatist. Literally nothing. Strip the layers from an onion. The bit that is left, that is Octavian. I, Virgil, the ‘autobiography’ of Rome’s greatest poet, traces the fall of the Republic and the rise of the first emperor, Augustus Caesar. Warts and all. **

Marcus Corvinus, one of the liveliest and most engaging of sleuths, makes a welcome return in this baffling and intricate puzzle.

When the ex-praetor husband of a friend of Claudius's mother-in-law is found murdered on his estate near Carthage the emperor gives Corvinus the job of working out whodunnit. The twentieth book in the Marcus Corvinus series.

'I need a favour from you, Corvinus. Do what Occusia asks, and I'll be very grateful. Very grateful indeed. Turn her down, or fudge things, and – watch my lips here, please – you'll wish that you'd never been born. Your choice, absolutely no pressure. You understand?'Four years down the line, and Sempronius Eutacticus is still the charming, good-natured organized-crime boss that he was when they last met. Now his stepson has gone missing, and he wants Corvinus to trace him. Not that it should be difficult, mind: there's no cause for concern, because young Titus has simply run off to join his uncle's acting troupe. Or that's what everyone assumes, anyway.Until, of course, he's found murdered.The thirteenth in the Marcus Corvinus series.