On a trip to Pompeii, Lady Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves, uncover a corpse in the ruins. Even as the police dismiss the murder as the work of local gangsters, Emily launches an investigation of her own, aided by a moody painter, the enigmatic site director, and a free-thinking American—but each of them has secrets. In this 14th outing (following Uneasy Lies the Crown), the sudden appearance of a beautiful young woman who claims a shocking relationship to the Hargreaves family throws Emily's investigation off-course. And as she struggles to face an unsettling truth about Colin's past, it becomes clear that someone else is willing to do anything necessary to put her off the case.