Private informer Marcus Didius Falco is in Ostia, landlocked Rome’s seaport, looking into the disappearance of Infamia, the penname for a gossip columnist for Rome’s Daily Gazette. Falco can’t find him, but he can find people who have no reason to love the writer…a retired pirate who may have done him in, some not-so-retired pirates who may have feared publicity, even some local union-paid vigiles (firefighter/cops) who don’t suffer scrutiny well. And, of course, there’s always Falco’s family to keep things lively…his sister, his loving patrician wife, his two young daughters, his ever-suffering mother, and his roguish father, who abandoned the family decades before but now occasionally keeps in touch. Lindsay Davis focuses on piracy and the seaborn resupply of Rome in this Falco novel.