Fortune's fool : a sixth case from the notebooks of Pliny the Younger

On the shores of beautiful Lake Como in Roman Italy, a Greek tragedy has taken place. Twenty years later, a skeleton falls out of a wall in Pliny's villa, bearing mute witness to family secrets and crimes. Pliny the Younger is intelligent about everything but women. He agrees to his wife's and mother's wishes to marry off his lover, Aurora, to another slave, but neglects telling her until the wedding! To add to his problems, when building a wing onto his Lake Como villa, workmen discover a skeleton. As is Pliny's habit, he launches a scientific investigation of the crime, but soon receives anonymous warnings and threats to cease. Then his wife, Livia, is kidnapped! As in the earlier books, a glossary of Roman terms and a list of historic and fictional characters are included "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." -- Provided by publisher