La Roma de Tiberio no es el mejor lugar para hacerse notar. Es preferible dedicarse al vino y las mujeres sin desempeñar ninguna tarea que pueda enturbiar esos placeres. Al menos, eso es lo que piensa Marco Corvino, heredero de una de las más nobles familias romanas y justamente orgulloso de no haber hecho nada de provecho en su vida.
Y aun así, para sorpresa no sólo suya sino de toda Roma, se encontrará intentando desentrañar los dos misterios que han permanecido sin resolver durante años en la ciudad imperial. ¿Por qué desterró Augusto al poeta Ovidio? ¿Qué ocurrió realmente en el desastre del bosque de Teutoburgo? Preguntas cuyas respuestas amenazan con enfrentarle a los más poderosos enemigos: nada menos que el emperador Tiberio y, sobre todo, su maquiavélica madre, Livia.

Having read the Parthian Shot first, it was fun to go back and see Corvinus meeting his lady-love. Fun to see him as a bachelor. Looks like the first three books in the series are based on historical events, or at least characters. Interestingly, in the first book the author doesn't have Corvinus call everyone guy, and that made it easier to read for me. I do worry that while exploring the various ways the surviving evidence could be twisted to make an interesting mystery, I may be seeding my brain with a twisted version of history. I read a time travel book once in which the hero suddenly realizes that he was expecting Theseus to be small because he'd read Mary Renault's book The King Must Die, when he was a kid. I hope I'm not getting that sort of unwitting filter. But after all, BBC already taught us that everyone in ancient Rome spoke with a British accent, right? So I'll try to read, enjoy, and forget most of it. ( )

I have always been a voracious reader of crime fiction and have been particularly struck by the great explosion over the last twenty years or so in the number of historical crime novels. Some periods seem to have yielded more fertile ground than others, with the Middle Ages and then the Tudors seeming especially popular. Classical Rome has been far from fallow, too, with the Falco novels by Lindsey Davis offering a pleasing mix of historical setting, clever plots and humorous narrator.

David Wishart Studied Classics at university and then went on to teach the subject at school for a few years, before becoming a professional, and indeed prolific, author of crime novels. This was a similar career path to that followed by Colin Dexter, creator of Chief Inspector Morse, who briefly taught Classics at my old school (though he left several years before I was even born). Unlike Dexter, who only displayed his dexterity with Latin and Greek through the often arrogant musings of Morse, Wishart has chosen to apply his knowledge more directly, setting his novels in the reign of Emperor Tiberius, in the opening years of the Current Era.

His narrator and protagonist is Marcus Corvinus, a young man from a prominent family, though one who has eschewed the traditional path into Roman politics and has instead established a reputation as an investigator. As the novel opens he is visited by Perilla, stepdaughter of the exiled poet Ovid. She commissions Corvinus to secure permission for the dead poet's ashes to be returned to Rome for discreet but respectable burial. Expecting this to be a straightforward task, and eager to impress the beautiful Perilla, Corvinus accepts the commission, only to find that the quest is far more sensitive than he, or indeed Perilla, had anticipated. Serious obstacles are placed in his way, and it rapidly becomes apparent that vested interests with very powerful contacts are anxious to prevent any examination of the reasons behind the poet's exile.

Corvinus is an engaging character, with a scurrilous and refreshingly bawdy outlook on life. Wishart is a gifted writer to, managing to impart a vast amount of knowledge about Imperial Rome without ever seeming to preach or adopt too didactic a tone. The plot (presumably founded on sound history) is very complicated, and I felt that the book might have benefitted from being perhaps fifty or sixty pages shorter. It was, however, very enjoyable as well as being informative, and I am looking forward to reading other novels in the series. ( )

This is a book that is really a 3 star read, but it held my attention, and I wanted to know the solution to the mystery, so I gave it an extra 1/2 star (plus appearance by Herman the German (aka Armineus).

So first, I want to address the way Marcus speaks - I know some reviewers had a problem with that. I don't. Why? Because Marcus would have been speaking in Latin, and the people he hangs out with would have spoken a more "common" form of Latin. So with the author using a more "mobster/less formal" way of speaking is in line with who Marcus is.

However, the plot is all over the place. First the mystery - I'm not sure if it was entirely explained exactly what Ovid saw, when, that got him exiled from Rome. Also, Corvinus seemed to drop the Ovid thing as soon as it became apparent that the mystery was bigger - it does get resolved in the end, but it seemed a tacked on.

The second this is the way Marcus was written - at times, a man who knows the ins and outs of women and the world of criminals. At other times, he seemed like an innocent kid bumbling around. His love for Perilla didn't make sense - she's initially described as a prude, someone who Marcus wouldn't fall for.

The mystery itself is quite interesting, bringing knowledge of how Rome during this time worked, and doing it in a way that makes people feel human, rather than like antiques. The mystery actually happened, however, I'm not sure if the characters in involved in the mystery were involved in the way this book describes them.

So overall, not a bad read, not a good read, but it did hold my attention. ( )

Fairly fresh from the enjoyable Food for the Fishes, a later Marcus Corvinus mystery, I was curious about how this series began. Whoever reads any novels in this series has to accept Wishart's Roman world as is, also his deliberately anachronistic dialogue, narration, and inner monologues of Marcus, the Senatorial protagonist and narrator--a "broad-striper". Marcus is a party animal. He is not interested in pursuing the politics and promotions of the 'cursus honorem'. I liked Marcus, a wine-quaffing Mickey Spillane or Sam Spade in the Rome of Tiberius. The emperor is irreverently nicknamed "The Wart" by Marcus.

The poet Ovid's stepdaughter, the Lady Perilla, asks Marcus to help bring the deceased Ovid's ashes back to Rome from Tomi on the Black Sea, the place of the poet's exile. She wants to give them a proper internment on Roman soil. From that simple request, the plot becomes more and more convoluted. Marcus agrees to help, is stonewalled by bureaucracy, and uncovers a plot involving the imperial family. Marcus escapes death several times as the mystery deepens. Marcus also finds links connecting the intrigue, the Teutoberg Forest Massacre, and the Roman commander of the three legions in Germany, Quinctilius Varus. There are the usual clues, red herrings, and dead bodies. With so many disparate plot strands, I wondered how the author would pull everything together to make sense. He created a logical plot from the few simple facts that are known historically, filling in gaps fictionally.

I liked Marcus's thinking things out and trying to put two and two together. He wasn't afraid to express any uncertainties. The Lady Perilla was no slouch, either. I got a good picture of the Roman patron-client relationship.

I highly recommend this to those wanting to read good escapist historical mystery fiction. ( )