‘Uh…Dad?’ Young Lucius’s face was chalk white. ‘Dad,

I think he’s dead.’ It took a moment to register. Then Renatius dropped the towel and was through the door in five seconds flat; and the rest of the wineshop, including me, were about two seconds behind him.

When Pegasus, racing mega-star and lead driver of the Whites faction, is found stabbed to death in the alleyway beside Renatius’s wineshop, Marcus Corvinus is already on site. The local District Watch – crooked to a man – claim that the killer’s motive was simple theft, but Corvinus knows it wasn’t.

Tracking the murderer down, with the often-unwilling help of his wife Perilla, takes him deep into the murky world of Roman chariot-racing with all its secrets, skulduggeries and scams; and his task is not made any easier by the fact that in the process he has a lovesick major-domo, an invisible dagger and Mount Etna to contend with.

read the 1st chapter