First-century Rome is not the quiet, orderly city that it pretends to be, and in this environment, a very clever private informer can thrive. The daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, Flavia Albia is a chip off the old block. She's taken over her father's old profession, and, like him, she occasionally lets her love of a good puzzle get in the way of her common sense, but she always sees the case through.
When a man falls to his death from the Tarpeian Rock, which overlooks the Forum in the Capitoline Hill in Ancient Rome, it looks like a suicide, but one witness swears that she saw it happen and that he was pushed. Normally, this would attract very little official notice but this man happened to be in charge of organizing the Imperial Triumphs demanded by the emperor. In this seventh outing (after Pandora's Boy), Flavia Albia must unravel a truly complex case of murder with far too many suspects, before danger shows up on her own doorstep.