Fortune's Fool
A Sixth Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
On the shores of beautiful Lake Como in Roman Italy, a Greek tragedy has taken place. Twenty years later, a skeleton falls out of a wall in Pliny’s villa, bearing mute witness to family secrets and crimes. Pliny the Younger is intelligent about everything but women. He agrees to his wife’s and mother’s wishes to marry off his lover, Aurora, to another slave, but neglects telling her until the wedding! To add to his problems, when building a wing onto his Lake Como villa, workmen discover a skeleton. As is Pliny’s habit, he launches a scientific investigation of the crime, but soon receives anonymous warnings and threats to cease. Then his wife, Livia, is kidnapped! • As in the earlier books, a glossary of Roman terms and a list of historic and fictional characters are included.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bell's subpar sixth mystery featuring ancient Roman magistrate Pliny the Younger (after 2014's The Eyes of Aurora) focuses on Pliny's complex personal life. Pliny, who was once engaged to Livilla, has married her older sister, Livia, whose first husband died under suspicious circumstances. He is in love, however, with his servant, Aurora. Livia suspects that he's being unfaithful to her, and Pliny feels compelled to arrange a sham marriage for Aurora to assuage Livia's concerns. When his entire entourage visits one of his family villas on the shore of Lake Comum in the Alps, Pliny gets immersed in a murder mystery after skeletal remains are found in a wall that have signs of blunt force trauma. Fans of Bell's better efforts such as The Blood of Caesar, in which Emperor Domitian asks Pliny to solve a murder with grave political implications, can hope for a return to form next time.
