The first in a loosely planned trilogy in which Falco succumbs to pressure and tries to find a partner to work with: here, his best friend Petronius Longus. Petro’s life is in every kind of crisis, so perhaps the last thing he needs is to join Falco in a search for the serial killer who has been dumping dismembered bodies in the aqueducts.

Lacking forensic tools, hampered by administrative indifference, and dogged by the tiresome Anacrites – now championed by Falco’s Ma, who thinks he’s wonderful – the new partners discover unexpected tensions that may destroy their relationship; that’s assuming Petro’s dangerous girlfriend gangster’s daughter Milvia doesn’t do for him first. Or her terrible mother. As the author faces up to the task of handling a gruesome story in a sensitive manner, convention decrees that the killer is bound to attack someone we know – but who?…

This is the one where Falco buys the site of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli and says nobody with taste and money would live there.