Ancient Rome’s organized crime syndicates have never been more dangerous or more cunning than in Lindsey Davis’s latest adventure featuring First Century sleuth Marcus Didius Falco. One of Marcus Didius Falco’s guiltier pleasures is reading the scandal column in the Daily Gazette, which is always conveniently found in Rome’s Forum. When the scandal column’s pseudonymous scribe Infamia goes missing in seaside Ostia, Falco is asked to search for him. It turns out that Infamia was working on a story about an underworld kidnapping racket involving Cilician pirates. And Falco soon finds himself up against a much more sinister and powerful organization than anything he has encountered before—a paramilitary group whose corrupt tentacles reach well into the ranks of the government itself.