Lustrum

Book excerpt: PRE-ORDER PRECIPICE, THE THRILLING NEW NOVEL FROM ROBERT HARRIS, NOW - PUBLISHING AUGUST 2024 'A pure thriller . . . wry, clever, thoughtful, with a terrific sense of timing and eye for character' Observer 'No one delivers thrilling yet timeless games of power, sex, fame and Rome like Robert Harris' Sunday Telegraph Rome, 63 BC. Seven men are struggling for power: Cicero the consul, Caesar his ruthless rival, Pompey the republic's greatest general, Crassus its richest man, Cato a political fanatic, Catilina a psychopath and Clodius an ambitious playboy. These real historical figures - their alliances and betrayals, their cruelties and seductions - are all interleaved in Lustrum, through its narrator Tiro, a confidential secretary to Cicero. He knows all his master's secrets - a dangerous position to be in. 'Thoroughly engaging . . . The allure of power and the perils that attend it have seldom been so brilliantly anatomised in a thriller' Sunday Times