Plot Summary:
Uncle Tullius has bought a house. Ten years after Mount Vesuvius erupted, he wants to support the bereaved community (for tax reasons) so he has acquired a bargain on Bay of Naples. His amiable nephew is to renovate the property – in the course of which, as Tiberius tells his sceptical workmen, there may be grim discoveries. These will have to be investigated by Albia: something for the boss’s wife to do while she waits for nice furniture to arrive and the water supply to be reconnected.
Death in the Roman world, as now, can be from domestic cruelty, a lifetime of self-abuse or a sudden accident. The fact that vicious rocks and choking ash are blotting out the daylight in the world’s most beautiful scenery does not change the poisonous dynamics of family life. ‘Friends’ may hope your income will supplement theirs – and perhaps it would be best to remove you first… Now, in the once thriving spa town of Stabiae, a curious mix of local entrepreneurs and visiting forces of law and order are at odds; then Albia plans a showdown that owes a debt to the history of forensic experiment – although both the unguents and ethics were much more slippery two thousand years ago…