Roman Games   Rome, 96 AD. The city’s labyrinthine politics have
brought the Emperor Domitian to the final stages of paranoia,
manifest in his employment of a vast network of spies. Informers
squirrel out secrets and denounce real and imagined traitors (or
people who refuse to bribe them).  Pliny the Younger is a
discreet up-and-coming Roman senator whose success is based on
hard work and keeping his head well down. This earns him a
reputation for competence and impartiality, and Domitian
handpicks him to investigate the murder of a top informer, a
slimy libertine with no shortage of enemies called Sextus Verpa.
The Roman Games have begun, and the law courts are in recess for
15 days. Pliny has that long to find out ‘whodunit’, or all of
Verpa’s household slaves will be horribly executed. He also has
to consider the imperial wrath if the guilty party turns out to
be politically unacceptable. Along the way Pliny picks up two
sidekicks, the most important being the poet Martial.
Specialising in scatological sa