a murder mystery set in Rome at the time of the Emperor Constantine! The "detective" is a young woman in the service of Constantine's mother, Helena. We get a picture of what Rome was like at the very beginning of the ascendancy of the Christian church. Two crimes which seem to be totally unrelated - the brutal murders of retired soldiers who had once served on Hadrian's wall and fought the Picts, and the kidnapping for ransom of sons and daughters of wealthy Roman's turn out to be part and parcel of the whole plot. There's an exciting scene in the gladiators arena, and the title refers to a rather terrible form of execution which the guilty suffer!