3.5*

A fictional investigation into a historical murder. Corby does a good job showing his reader daily life in 461 B.C. Athens (and I wish that I had discovered the glossary at the end earlier!) and provided enough explanation of the politics at the time (which were a factor in the murder). I also appreciated his Author's Note at the end which explained which parts where historical, which reasonable guesses and which entirely fictional.

One historically accurate bit took me aback -- in this time & culture, if a man died without sons his widow was required to marry the closest possible male relative. If that man happened to be already married, he was required to divorce so as to marry the widow! The divorced wife would be sent back to her family.

One minor complaint is that Nicolaos at times speaks too much as a modern man (referring to shield factories for example, which struck me as anachronistic). ( )

Just shallow enough that I felt like I would prefer to listen to it on audio. But definitely full of fun historical detail.

A fictional investigation into a historical murder. Corby does a good job showing his reader daily life in 461 B.C. Athens (and I wish that I had discovered the glossary at the end earlier!) and provided enough explanation of the politics at the time (which were a factor in the murder). I also appreciated his Author's Note at the end which explained which parts where historical, which reasonable guesses and which entirely fictional.

One historically accurate bit took me aback -- in this time & culture, if a man died without sons his widow was required to marry the closest possible male relative. If that man happened to be already married, he was required to divorce so as to marry the widow! The divorced wife would be sent back to her family.

One minor complaint is that Nicolaos at times speaks too much as a modern man (referring to shield factories for example, which struck me as anachronistic). ( )

A young Athenian becomes involved in investigating the murder of Ephialtes, a politician who had just turned Athens into a democracy.
Although it's claimed to be "in the tradition of Lindsey Davis" the author has a way to go before he's there.
Nico wanders about Athens asking questions without a whole lot of subtlety and is lucky he's not murdered any number of times by any number of people.
Only average. ( )

Fictional murder investigation based on historical assassination in ancient Athens. Some cute stuff but I just did not get very excited about it all. May be just me. ( )