Rome Crime Mystery

Murder, blackmail and drug dealing on the Tiber combine in one of Ngaio Marsh’s liveliest and most evocative novels. When their guide disappears mysteriously in the depths of a Roman basilica, the members of Mr. Sebastian Mailer’s tour group seem strangely unperturbed. But when a body is discovered in an Etruscan sarcophagus, Superintendent Alleyn, in Rome incognito on the trail of an international drug racket, is very much concerned.

As he plunged his attacker’s blade deep into the man’s abdomen, Father Michael Thomas thought he understood the difference between murder and justifiable homicide. After Church officials learn what happened in that dark back-alley amid the slums of Bogota, they urgently whisked Michael away to an isolated compound in rural Wyoming. Alongside a handful of trainees, he lives under an assumed name, learns the skills of a moral investigator and clandestine operative, and faces the ethical dilemma repeatedly placed before him: When is a deliberate death a righteous act?