Amid the city’s sordid underbelly, Gordianus learns that the murdered man was a dangerous spy. Before fleeing the city, Pompey exacts a terrible bargain from the finder of secrets to unearth the killer, or sacrifice his own son in law to service in Pompey’s legions, and certain death. Is Catilina really a subversive renegade, or are Cicero suspicions part of an even greater conspiracy? When a headless corpse ominously appears on his farm, Gordianus knows he must unlock the secret of Catilina’s Riddle before Rome tears herself apart.Īs Caesar marches on Rome and panic erupts in the city, Gordianus the Finder discovers, in his own home, the body of Pompey’s favorite cousin. Now caught in a cloak and dagger political struggle for the fate of the Republic, Gordianus finds himself strangely drawn to the controversial candidate.

But when his old friend Cicero enlists the Finder in an elaborate plot to control Catilina, Gordianus is drawn back into a familiar world. Gordianus the Finder, retired to his Etruscan farm, is happy to be free of the intrigue and danger of the capital. With the consular election drawing near, Rome is fiercely divided between the conservative Cicero and the tempestuous Catilina, whose followers are rumored to be plotting a blood thirsty siege for power if their leader fails to win office. Although he distrusts both men, Gordianus is forced into the center of the power struggle when his six-year-old daughter Diana finds a headless corpse in their stable.Using scholarly historical insight and evocative storytelling that brings to life the glories of ancient Rome, Steven Saylor takes the reader from the bloody lines of clashing Roman armies to the backrooms of the Senate floor, where power hungry politicians wrestle the Fates for control of Rome’s destiny. Claiming that Catilina plans an uprising if he loses the race, Cicero asks Gordianus to keep a watchful eye on the radical. But this bucolic life is disrupted by the machinations and murderous plots of two politicians: Roman consul Cicero, Gordianus's longtime patron, and populist senator Catilina, Cicero's political rival and a candidate to replace him in the annual elections for consul.

Gordianus, disillusioned by the corruption of Rome circa 63 B.C., has fled the city with his family to live on a farm in the Etruscan countryside. FROM THE PUBLISHER - The third in Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa novels featuring Gordianus the Finder.

Catilina's Riddle by Steven Saylor