Fortune's fool
Subtitle: a sixth case from the notebooks of Pliny the Younger
By: Albert A. Bell, Jr
Series: Cases from the notebooks of Pliny the Younger
Publisher: Perseverance Press/John Daniel & Company
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 251
ISBN-13: 9781564745873
Subjects: Family secrets; Murder; Investigation; Fiction
Description: "While staying at his villa on Lake Comum, with Tacitus and his wife as guests, Pliny decides to add on to the house. When workmen begin demolishing a wall, they find a human skeleton. Pliny knows when the wall was built and he knows his wife's father disappeared at that time. But his father-in-law supposedly drowned. Shortly after finding the skeleton, Pliny begins to receive warnings and threats to halt his investigation. Then his wife, Livia, is kidnapped. The kidnapers want a document in exchange for Livia, but Pliny has no idea where it is. With the help of Tacitus and Aurora, he rescues Livia, but Aurora is injured and suffers a miscarriage. (She had not told Pliny she was pregnant.) Pliny learns that an innkeeper in the town of Comum was his father's mistress. She knows where the missing document is. Ultimately Pliny discovers that his biological father was complicit in the death of Livia's father by hiding the body in the wall. Livia's father and two other men were involved in a pedophile ring. Her father was killed in an argument among the men."--