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Audiobook read by Christian Rodska.
Marcus Didius Falco - the emperor Vespasian's informer (investigator), is sent to Britain to investigate corruption on the sire of a new-build palace for a British king, but not before he and his father have dug up a decaying corpse under his father's new bath house mosaic. The builders who finished the bath house floor can't be found anywhere, so it looks like they've skipped Rome. Marcus's days of travelling alone are behind him, so the party consists of Marcus, his wife Helena Justinia, their two small daughters, their truculent nursemaid, Marcus's two assistants, Helena's brothers, and Marcus's sister, there under protest to keep her safe from a dangerous stalker. Marcus hates Britain, and things on the building site get complicated when another body turns up in the king's bath house, and a coldly efficient assassin is known to be in the area. The Falco books are always reliably entertaining and the reader, Christian Rodska, does a very creditable job, though having just listened to his reading of a Hornblower book, some characters occasionally sound like C.S. Forester's Mr Bush. (That's possibly a bit unfair of me because the juxtaposition is mere coincidence.)
