Danger in the Wind

A fine summer in 100 AD and good government under Trajan Caesar promise well for the Roman settlers in the frontier province of Britannia. At a small fort near York, Jovina, a senior officer’s wife, invites her cousin Aurelia Marcella to a midsummer birthday party. June is a busy time at Aurelia’s inn, but she accepts the invitation because Jovina’s letter includes a desperate plea for help, referring to “danger in the wind.” Aurelia assumes the danger arises from some family or personal quarrel, because the fort itself is in a peaceful district…or is it? On the day the letter arrives, a soldier staying at the inn is murdered in his bed. He was carrying a cryptic message indicating violence is about to erupt at Jovina’s fort, on the very day of her party. Aurelia learns that what was once a quiet village attached to a dull military base has become a potential trouble spot, thanks to an unpopular tax collector and native tribesmen who hate the Roman occupation. But she knows she can’t desert her cousin in a dangerous situation, and makes the journey. She finds Jovina and her drunken husband and unruly children caught in a tangled web of greed, love, death, and political intrigue. When violence engulfs the district, Aurelia herself is in peril from enemies determined to stop her unravelling the twisted strands of a serious anti-Roman conspiracy. The fourth in the Aurelia Marcella Series.

Jane Finnis grew up in Yorkshire, northern England. For twenty years she lived and worked in London as a radio producer and reporter, and a computer programmer, but then she moved back to Yorkshire, with her husband Richard. Now they live near the East Yorkshire coast.