What a macho fellow this guy is. Treats women like dirt. Then I found this British review and learned something I found what it was about

By J. Chippindale (England) - See all my reviews


This review is from: Spqr (Mass Market Paperback)
John Maddox Roberts is the pseudonym of Mark Ramsay, author of numerous works of science fiction and fantasy, in addition to his successful historical SPQR mystery series. He lives in New Mexico with his wife.

Anyone who is a fan of Lindsey Davis, Steven Saylor or David Wishart will love the SPQR series of books by the author. Once again we have an addition to the ever growing number of amateur detectives patrolling the streets of ancient Rome, solving mysteries and crimes. Not all at the same time, I may add, in fact not even in the same centuries. Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, a high-born bad boy, is the offering of the author and he is just as interesting, likeable and believable as the leading characters from the author's comtemporaries.

How is the strangulation of a freed man, an ex gladiator linked to the fatal stabbing of a foreigner, an importer of wines and oil and the subsequent arson of the man's warehouse? Why are those men at the highest level of the senate remotely interested in the event. In fact, almost wetting themselves at the deaths of two seemingly unimportant people?

With the help of his aunt, an aging Vestal Virgin of all things and a Greek physician whose lifelike demonstration of garrotting leaves marks on Decius's neck, our detective sniffs out a government cover-up and some less than legal activities by the great man Pompey and Crassus . . .