THREE HANDS IN THE FOUNTAIN

'Rich with Roman skulduggery' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY Marcus Didius Falco is enjoying a drink of ill-travelled Spanish wine with his old friend Petronius Longus when a man cleaning the local fountain makes a gruesome discovery: a severed human hand. The two friends learn that body parts have been turning up for years in the water systems of Roman - the aqueducts, the sewers and even the River Tiber itself. The killer strikes during public festivals, and the Roman Games are imminent. The city will be full of sightseers: finding the killer among thousands will be next to impossible. Aided and inspired as always by Helena Justina, and struggling to avoid the snakelike Chief Spy Anacrites who wants to beat them to the answer, Falco and Petro acquire an enthusiastic consul as a patron. Together they start searching two hundred miles of aqueducts and the teeming streets around the Circus Maximus, in a desperate race to catch the sadist whose next strike can only be days away...