Amazon.co.uk: alas, this title appears to be only available second-hand in the UK - but try your local library
Amazon.com $14.95
Amazon.ca $ n/a
Murder/Mystery
96AD
Sextus Verpa, a
hated informer to the paranoid Emperor Domitian, is found stabbed to death and
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus – Pliny the Younger to you and me – is called
to investigate. Well, not so much to investigate, but to ascertain the guilt of
one of Verpa's Jewish slaves – 'traitors and atheists, as they are'. On the basis that if one is guilty then all
of the others must have known about it and are therefore complicit in the
murder, their fate is to be burned alive in the arena once the Roman Games have
been completed. Pliny has fifteen days to find the truth.
It soon becomes
apparent that the main suspect was innocent, but Pliny's task isn't made any
easier when the slave is murdered whilst in confinement.
It's all in
here: body in a locked room, suspects and motives, people not being who they
appear to be, a drunken bawdy poet who finds himself assisting Pliny, a
mysterious man with his arm in a sling, religious overtones and political
plots.
Poor Pliny;
knowing he is inadequate in terms of detection, he stumbles from conclusion to
conclusion, all of which prove to be part
of the solution but not all of it.
I thoroughly
enjoyed this romp. The characterisation of Pliny was excellent, wise, naïve and
very, very fallible. Those of a squeamish nature may not like some of the
methods of torture and execution that the Romans employed, but fortunately they
are not too gruesome – merely matter of fact. There is quite a lot of sexual
activity and innuendo but nothing that we might not expect from those
'decadent' times.
“Infamy, infamy! They've all got it in for
me....”
Very enjoyable.
© Richard
Tearle
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Looks fun! Thanks for the introduction to this author, Richard!
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