In April of AD 83 a caravan of travelers stop at an inn for the night. The next morning one of them is dead, butchered in horrific fashion. No Roman magistrates are on the scene, so Pliny the Younger takes charge until the provincial governor can be summoned. Pliny surprises his friend, Cornelius Tacitus, and a doctor named Luke by suggesting that the cause of death might be something other than the obvious knife wounds.  Suspects abound: a man who owed the victim money, the priestess of an arcane religious cult, two travelers who have kept aloof from others in the caravan. And Pliny learns some surprising things about one of the victim's slave girls, a beautiful young blond. But all of Pliny's sleuthing may be in vain if it turns out that the killer had another victim in mind--Pliny himself.