Review: Persona Non Grata by Ruth Downie

Persona Non Grata is Ruth Downie's third book in her series of mysteries set in the farflung the Roman Empire during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian that features the medicus Gaius Petraeus Ruso and his slave/girlfriend/partner-in-detecting Tilla (who's British name is unpronounceable and translates to "Daughter of Lugh").

In the first two books of the series, the action takes place in Roman Britain, but in this one Ruso has been granted leave from the legion and has brought Tilla to his home in Gaul where he has come to sort out some family problems, most of them having to do with money ~ or rather the lack thereof. The first third of the novel was a bit long and consisted mostly of introducing the cast of characters and highlighting their unusually unpleasant idiosyncracies. Then someone dies right in front of Ruso, and it looks like he was done in by poison. The fact that the dead guy was Ruso's main creditor who was in the process of ruining him legal and turning his family off the family farm to become homeless and destitute makes Ruso look pretty good for the murderer, at first glance anyway.  After that, the story gets really good, and I ended up liking it far more than the first two. For one thing, there were some really amusing bits.  Also, Tilla is beginning to be more likeable and Ruso not to irritating in his thick-headedness.  I also liked the way the author developes even the unlikeable characters so that in the end I had begun to understand them, if not outright like them.

Oh, and the mystery? It was okay, if just a tad too facile. But I just love Downie's way with characters and her ability to evoke the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of the ancient Roman world, so the mystery is secondary for me.

This series lies somewhere between Lindsey Davis's Falco and Wishart's Marcus Corvinus mysteries and the more serious SPQR and Gordianus the Finder mysteries by John Maddox Roberts and Steven Saylor, respectively. 

CAVEAT:  This was a LibraryThing Early Review book that I received gratis in exchange for a review.  (Notice the Latin terms in a review of a Roman mystery? Pretty classy, huh?)  The opinions expressed are strictly my own and were in no way influenced by the fact the book was free.

Murder in Ancient Rome

In the debut novel Roman Games by Bruce Macbain, Pliny the Younger, a somewhat straitlaced Senator and expert probate lawyer, is ordered by the Emperor Domitian (the last of the Flavian dynasty and the nemesis of Lindsey Davis's detective Falco) to solve a locked-door murder of a hated informer. While making his bumbling way toward discovering the culprit and how the deed was accomplished, he uncovers a lot more going on than he really wants to know.

Roman Games is well-written with a good plot and well-developed, multi-layered characters and contains no anachronisms of which I was aware. It falls somewhere between Roberts's SPQR mysteries and Saylor's Gordianus series in terms of seriousness and well-researched historical detail. I haven't read a lot about the reign of Domitian, so Roman Games was interesting for that reason too.

I found the protagonist Pliny to be a bit tiresome, what with his seemingly unrelenting naivete, his slight pomposity and an insufferably proper attitude, though he was certainly a decent man.  I also found him a bit unlikeable (for one thing, he treated his pregnant wife of FOURTEEN like, well, a child ~ a lovable one but a child nonetheless, and a slightly stupid one at that), and I feel that he didn't do much in the way of growing during the course of the novel, but it wasn't enough to put me off reading it or looking forward to the next installment (I'm sure this is the beginning of a series). Certainly, idealistic honorable courageous men who stood up to the imperial bullies were at a premium in those days, and from what history I've read of the time it wasn't unusual for women to marry young and be treated like children or halfwits. Still, I hope as the series advances, so too will Pliny. And his child bride.

The subject matter was darker and the action more brutal than any of the other Roman mysteries I recall reading recently and, thus, more realistically portrays life in those dangerous days, but I didn't find it outrageous or prurient in any way.  Lots of swearing, especially by the soldiers, but quite a bit of it was, if you'll credit it, in Latin.  I enjoyed those parts a lot.  Many of the characters were historical personages, including Pliny, and much of the action was based on first-person accounts by Pliny and others.

In any event, as an aficianado of ancient Roman mystery/detective series, I'm excited to have another Roman detective to follow and highly recommend Roman Games to anyone who enjoys the Falco, Gordianus, Corvinus or SPQR mysteries.

For more plot information, here's the blurb from the NetGalley website:

"Rome: September, 96 AD. When the body of Sextus Verpa, a notorious senatorial informer and libertine, is found stabbed to death in his bedroom, his slaves are suspected.

"Pliny is ordered by the emperor Domitian to investigate. However, the Ludi Romani, the Roman Games, have just begun and for the next fifteen days the law courts are in recess. If Pliny can't identify the murderer in that time, Verpa's entire slave household will be burned alive in the arena.

"Pliny, a very respectable young senator and lawyer, teams up with Martial, a starving author of bawdy verses and denizen of the Roman demimonde. Pooling their respective talents, they unravel a plot that involves Jewish and Christian 'atheists,' exotic Egyptian cultists, and a missing horoscope that forecasts the emperor's death.

"Their investigation leads them into the heart of the palace, where no one is safe from the paranoid emperor. As the deadline approaches, Pliny struggles with the painful dilemma of a good man who is forced to serve a brutal regime—a situation familiar in our own age as well.

"The novel provides an intimate glimpse into the palaces and tenements, bedrooms and brothels of imperial Rome's most opulent and decadent age."

DISCLAIMER: I received this free unproofed eGalley, sent to my Kindle by the publisher with no strings attached, through http://netgalley.com/. The opinions in the review are my own, and I am being paid nothing for my review. Please note that parts of the story may change between now and publication date. The novel is due for release in October 2010.

NetGalley, My Kindle's New Friend

The other day, I learned from Valerie Comer over at Little Worlds about NetGalley, a website where publishers can submit unbound galleys of as-yet-unpublished books that early reviewers can request and read as eBooks and then, it is hoped, review.

I signed up right away (because I don't have enough books to read), clicked on a bunch that I thought looked good, and right away got two eBook galleys from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  I've already started reading them ~ The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths and The Diviner's Tale by Bradford Morrow (both of which I'm relieved to say are quite good so far).  The Diviner's Tale and The Janus Stone are both due out next January.  I'll be reviewing them here any day now, but here's what the publisher has to say about The Diviner's Tale:

Walking a lonely forested valley on a spring morning in upstate New York, having been hired by a developer to dowse the land, Cassandra Brooks comes upon the shocking vision of a young girl hanged from a tree. When she returns with authorities to the site, the body has vanished, leaving in question Cassandra’s credibility if not her sanity. The next day, on a return visit with the sheriff to have another look, a dazed, mute missing girl emerges from the woods, alive and the very picture of Cassandra’s hanged girl. 

What follows is the narrative of ever-deepening and increasingly bizarre divinations that will lead this gifted young woman, the struggling single mother of twin boys, hurtling toward a past she’d long since thought was behind her. The Diviner’s Tale is at once a journey of self-discovery and an unorthodox murder mystery, a tale of the fantastic and a family chronicle told by an otherwise ordinary woman.

When Cassandra’s dark forebodings take on tangible form, she is forced to confront a life spiraling out of control. And soon she is locked in a mortal chess match with a real-life killer who has haunted her since before she can remember.

And a blurb from Joyce Carol Oates: “Luminous and magical, fraught with suspense, beautifully and subtly rendered—a feat of prose divination.”

Sounds yummy, doesn't it!

Having stayed up late into the night reading The Janus Stone, I'm a bit further into it so can discuss it from my own perspective rather than relying solely on the opinions of the publisher and others.

The Janus Stone begins with Ruth Galloway, an archaelogist, being sent to a dig in Norwich where some old bones, apparently without a skull, have been unearthed from beneath an ancient mound thought to be the remains of the wall of a Roman villa.  Not long after that, in a nearby town, the bones of a child ~ also missing its skull ~ are found buried under the front door step of a Victorian mansion that is being demolished to build a fancy hotel, and Ruth is called in to investigate that grisly find.  Are the bones from a Roman-era ritual sacrifice, or is the killer closer at hand?

The Janus Stone is a follow-up to The Crossing Places, Griffiths’s first mystery, which I confess I have not yet read.  (Based on how good the second book is, I'll be remedying that little oversight as soon as I can.)  I think it would have been better had I read the first book in the series before starting the second.  The relationship between Ruth and the investigating detective D.I. Harry Nelson is a developing one and, I suspect, would have been better understood had I been with them from the inception.  The mystery itself, of course, is fine on its own and, despite not having read the first, I'm really enjoying it. 

Still, if you are new to this author, I urge you to begin at the beginning, with The Crossing Places.  This works out well, since The Janus Stone won't be available for another six months.

I'm so far behind, I may never catch up!

I've really enjoyed the books I've gotten to review, at least the ones I've had a chance to read so far, and I've also enjoyed reviewing them, at least the ones...well, you get the picture. Unfortunately, my life over the past few weeks has been crazier than usual, what with a major plumbing problem which included a large jagged hold in the living room ceiling and a sopping wet carpet, removal of the unexpectedly asbestos-containing "popcorn coating" on the aforesaid ceiling, and a copper repiping job. Anyway, I'm still dealing with the fallout of that mess (repairing the walls and ceiling, including patching, plastering and painting, as well as getting the final approval of the job by the city's building inspector).

What's that's meant as far as my blog is concerned is that I haven't had much time to read, much less review, the many books that I have been sent by wonderful authors, publishers, and others, or to interview the authors I have lined up to have as guests on my blog.

So, this is my abject apology for slacking off lately and my promise to get started again just as soon as this nightmare is over.

In case you're wondering, the books for which I owe a review are: Brideshead Revisited, The Italian Lover, The Brass Verdict, The Hand of Isis, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, Fault Line, and Nine Lords of the Night. The first three have already been read, the fourth I'm reading now, and the last three are on the TBR pile.

Just One More Page - Indeed!

Okay, I know I said I wasn't going to blog again until NaNo ends on November 30, but I finished a book last night instead of working at my NaNoNovel (yes, I am the Queen of Procrastination) and wanted to review it. This is it, though, I swear! Really! No more reading. No more reviewing. At least until December 1.

Anyway, with no further ado, here is my review of a LibraryThing Early Review book, LIVING AGELESSLY by Linda Altoonian:

Very little of the information contained in this slim 235-page book was new to me, but having it all in one easy-to-access place makes the book a must-have for anyone with aging parents, anyone who is approaching retirement age themselves (like me), or anyone already retired. Well-organized sections on health & fitness, preparing for retirement, and safety issues make it easy to find information.

Some of the chapters I found particularly helpful were the ones on travel and volunteering, avoiding scams and fraud, and how to deal with depression. I'm not a grandma yet, but, when I am (God and my daughter willing), I'll be referring to the chapter on grandparenting, with numerous ideas on how to interact with your grandkids in today's world, which, if you haven't noticed yet, differs remarkably from the world in which I grew up. I also found the chapters on nutrition well done, setting out nutritional requirements and sources in an easy-to-understand and accessible way.

A few chapters brought up unpleasant realities ~ the critical need for exercise & strength training (I know, I know, I plan to start tomorrow) and the eventual need to reassess one's driving capabilities as we age ~ that last is particularly unsettling to me, living as I do in Los Angeles, the driving capital of the U.S. (or so it seems).

One of my favorite features about LIVING AGELESSLY is its emphasis on mind-body connections. It stresses the importance of a healthy body and positive attitude, and the last chapter discusses what may be the most important way to live a long, healthy, happy life ~ being grateful and showing that gratitude, especially to those we love. Finally, the resources section at the end of the book provides hundreds of websites and phone numbers of organizations dedicated to working with retirees to make their (our) last years comfortable, vital, healthy, and happy.

It's almost enough to make me look forward to my retirement.