Lorac, the pen name of the British writer Edith Caroline Rivett.

[1][2] It is the forty-fifth in her long-running series featuring Superintendent MacDonald of Scotland Yard, one of the more conventional detectives of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

[3] Along with Murder in Vienna, it was one of the rare ventures abroad for the series, which generally took place in London and rural England.

It was the penultimate novel featuring MacDonald to be published during Lorac's lifetime.

While visiting Rome on a case of his own, MacDonald is drawn into investigating a murder involving British siblings, that took place at major monument in the Italian capital.