JACKET NOTES:  A riveting thriller that appropriates the beauty and savagery of classical Rome and set it off against the corruption and sleaze of the present day.
When a young woman turns up dead in a peat bog near the banks of the river Tiber, Teresa Lupo, a maverick pathologist, thinks she has the victim of an ancient pagan ritual on her hands. Inspector Leo Falcone, however, knows this case is recent history and the horror is still very much alive.
So begins an investigation that will take the police deep into the dark underworld of Rome's most disturbing and sinister secrets.
Nic Costa is trying to stay off the drink. Gianni Peroni used to work vice until he was caught in one of his own department's stings. Emilio Neri, the local mafia boss, can't trust his own son and Vergil Wallis, the former American mobster, is refusing to talk. Meanwhile, someone is try very hard to kill the pathologist. And now another beautiful woman has gone missing...
(© Pan Macmillan)