The Water Thief
304 AD. Aelius Spartianus, soldier and historian, is entrusted with an important task by Emperor Diocletian. Between historical research and detection, his charge is to reveal the truth about the mysterious death, one-hundred years earlier, of young Antinous, Hadrian’s legendary favorite, and to locate his forgotten sepulcher. Accordingly, Aelius travels to Egypt, soon to discover that there is much more to the game than historical details. Who or what, in fact, has been hiding for centuries under the name Water Thief? Along the Nile, the energetic tribune meets again old enemies and old friends, including Anubina, who was raised in a brothel and was his boyhood flame. But everything seems to conspire against the historian: natural calamities, threats and assaults, unexplainable murders. Only after returning to Rome will Aelius at long last identify the right trail, in the majestic ruins of what once was Hadrian’s famed villa… Merely a clue, that will eventually lead him to an astonishing, frightful revelation, such as to affect the very future and destiny of the Roman world.
In 2008 the novel’s Spanish edition (Conspiratio, El caso del ladron de agua) was awarded the highly prestigious “Premio International de la Novela Historica Ciudad de Zaragoza”
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