Lustrum - Robert Harris

Rome, 63 BC.

In a city on the brink of acquiring a vast empire, seven men are struggling for power. Cicero is consul, Caesar his ruthless young rival, Pompey the republic's greatest general, Crassus its richest man, Cato a political fanatic, Catilina a psychopath, Clodius an ambitious playboy.

The stories of these real historical figures - their alliances and betrayals, their cruelties and seductions, their brilliance and their crimes - are all interleaved to form this epic novel. Its narrator is Tiro, a slave who serves as confidential secretary to the wily, humane, complex Cicero. He knows all his master's secrets - a dangerous position to be in.

From the discovery of a child's mutilated body, through judicial execution and a scandalous trial, to the brutal unleashing of the Roman mob, Lustrum is a study in the timeless enticements and horrors of power.

Robert Harris is the author of fifteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2 and Act of Oblivion. His work has been translated into forty languages and
nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.

Harris is the master.
With Lustrum, [he] has surpassed himself. It is one of the most exciting thrillers I have ever read
Evening Standard

Harris communicates such a strong sense of imperial Rome - the book is awesomely well-informed about the minutiae of everyday life
Guardian

Thoroughly engaging ... The allure of power and the perils that attend it have seldom been so brilliantly anatomised in a thriller
Sunday Times

Harris never makes his comparisons between Rome and modern Britain explicit, but they are certainly there. And that's the principal charm of his ancient thrillers - their up-to-dateness
Sunday Telegraph

Magnificent ... Better than Robert Graves's Claudius novels
Standpoint