The Graveyard of Hesperides by Lindsey Davis is book #4 in the Flavia Albia Series (Available July 12, 2016).
In first century Rome, Flavia Albia, the daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken up her father's former profession as an informer. On a typical day, it's small cases—-cheating spouses, employees dipping into the till—-but this isn't a typical day. Her beloved, the plebeian Manlius Faustus, has recently moved in and decided that they should get married in a big, showy ceremony as part of beginning a proper domestic life together. Also, his contracting firm has been renovating a rundown dive bar called The Garden of the Hesperides, only to uncover human remains buried in the backyard. There have been rumors for years that the previous owner of the bar, now deceased, killed a bar maid and these are presumably her remains. In the choice between planning a wedding and looking into a crime from long ago, Albia would much rather investigate a possible murder. Or murders, as more and more remains are uncovered, revealing that something truly horrible has been going on at the Hesperides.
As she gets closer to the truth behind the bodies in the backyard, Albia's investigation has put her in the cross-hairs—-which might be the only way she'll get out of the wedding and away from all her relatives who are desperate to 'help.'
I
Everyone knew a dead barmaid was buried in the courtyard.
The Garden of the Hesperides was a large but otherwise typical eating house on a busy street corner, with two marble counters, five pot-holes for containers of food, three shelves of cracked beakers, an unreadable price list on a flaking wall and a faded picture of nude women. The daub seemed to have been painted by a shy artist who had never seen anyone naked. In a nervous line of three, his nudes huddled beneath gnarled boughs from which dangled dingy fruit. Hercules set about his scrumping task, watched by a bored snake instead of by Ladon, who ought to be a fearsome, hundred-headed, never-sleeping dragon. A snake was easier to draw, no doubt. The legendary Golden Apples were so pockmarked I personally would not have sent Hercules to climb the tree for them. Hard to tell with all the dirt whether it was just poor art or the paint was now peeling off the wall.
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