November 1973. Professor Periklis Harvatis, working alone and late into the night on an important archaelogical dig, has unearthed a magnificent golden vase upon which the enigmatic images of a long lost, second Odyssey are engraved, showing the mystery of Ulysses' last and final voyage. But in the bleak chamber where he finds it he sees something so frightening that - a broken man - less than 7 hours later he is dead. but not before he has ensured the safety of the vase.Ten years on, and a series of violently gruesome deaths connected to the rape and murder, during the student protests in Athens, of a beautiful Greek woman on the same night as Professor Harvatis's discovery, is perplexing the authorities. Each atrocity is accompanied by a dire quotation from the ancient sources, exposing an ingeniously cruel mind.