SPQR I

Blackmail, corruption, treachery, murder--the glory that was Rome. In this Edgar Award-nominated mystery, John Maddox Roberts takes readers back to a Rome filled with violence and evil. Vicious gangs ruled the streets of Crassus and Pompey, routinely preying on plebeian and patrician alike, so the garroting of a lowly ex-slaved and the disembowelment of a foreign merchant in the dangerous Subura district seemed of little consequence to the Roman hierarchy. But Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger--highborn commander of the local vigiles--was determined to investigate. Despite official apathy, brazen bribes, and sinister threates, Decius uncovers a world of corruption at the highest levels of his government that threatens to destroy him and the government he serves.

John Roberts is a philosopher, art theorist and playwright, and Professor of Art & Aesthetics at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of a number of books including: The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade (2007), The Necessity of Errors (2011), Photography and Its Violations (2014), Revolutionary Time and the Avant-Garde (2015), The Reasoning of Unreason: Universalism, Capitalism and Disenlightenment (2018) and Capitalism and the Limits of Desire (2021). He lives in London.