Author's note: Just as Shakespeare performed in modern dress is still Shakespeare, so history in modern dress is still history. The Case of the Secret Assassin is history in modern dress. Despite the telephones, guns, cars and pizzas that you will find in this book, the story is inspired by an actual event. The investigation is fiction, but it is based on an actual event in the middle of the first century AD in a province of the Roman Empire. (Some notes on the historical background will be found at the end of the book.)