Obviously, there's more to life than American superhero comics and twelve-inch singles; but, John Santini suspects, not much more. He has a small but perfectly formed circle of friends, tolerable flatmates and he earns just enough money cutting hair for Louie the Greek to go out and get blasted every Saturday night.
But when a journalist friend of his gets wind of a hot story, John finds himself sucked into a sinister chase that takes him from the clubs of London to the leafy suburbs of Bradford, where things don't entirely work out as planned.

At the beginning of the year 66, Emperor Nero ruled the Roman Empire. By the end of it, Nero had committed suicide and three of his successors were dead, and out of the carnage of civil war at home and a nationalistic uprising in Judaea a new emperor, Vespasian, had emerged. Here Scaurus, once the lover of both Vespasian's son and daughter, looks back on the whole extraordinary year and recreates a world of treachery, malice, passion and-occasionally-quiet heroism. Drawing on his formidable knowledge of Roman history, Allan Massie brings the distant past vividly to life and creates telling parallels with the present. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Allan Massie is the award-winning author of many novels, including his Roman Quartet, Antony, Augustus, Tiberius and Caesar, as well as several works of non-fiction. He lives in the Scottish Borders and writes for the Daily Telegraph and the Scotsman.