By Paul Carrier
This fourth entry in Ruth Downie’s mystery series starring Doctor Gaius Petreius Ruso finds our hero and his British wife, Tilla, back in Britannia in 120 A.D., where Ruso takes a job as a government investigator in the Roman province while he tries to find work as a "medicus."
Britannia’s procurator, who is in charge of collecting the province’s taxes, hires Ruso to track down Julius Asper, a missing tax collector from Verulamium (present-day St. Albans), a town a few miles north of Londinium.
Asper disappeared while he supposedly was en route to Londinium to deliver Verulamium’s taxes, so the initial assumption is that Asper and his brother, with whom he was traveling, made off with the missing 7,000 denarii.
Then Asper turns up dead in a Londinium inn, and a hastily scribbled but incomplete letter found under his bed claims he has found incriminating evidence of . . . something. Even as Ruso tries to sort out who murdered Asper and what he had uncovered, Asper's lover Camma shows up and gives birth to his son in the home where Ruso and Tilla are staying.
Theories abound. Were Asper and his brother accosted by bandits who robbed and killed both of them? Did the brother murder Asper and make off with the loot? Or was the killer Caratius, the cuckolded Verulamium politician who is Camma's husband?
Downie’s Medicus series is entertaining for a variety of reasons, including the fact that, as a doctor, the jaded but ever well-intentioned Ruso has a different take on life in the Roman Empire than do the more traditional investigators who normally populate mysteries set in Ancient Rome.
Moreover, with the exception of the third book in the series, which brought Ruso back home to his native Gaul, Ruso always finds himself in Britannia. Although several writers have conjured up detectives who ply their trade in Ancient Rome, Britannia is an unusual setting for this subgenre. (Rosemary Rowe also has a series set in this time and place.)
The locale has its advantages, not least because it allows Downie to explore the tensions that continued to exist during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian between the already well-established Roman occupiers and some native Britons, as well as the conflicting outlooks and allegiances that divided the Britons themselves.
The Romano-British culture that had developed by 120 A.D. is epitomized by Tilla, a native-born Briton who has made her peace with the empire and its foreign ways while remaining true to her tribal roots. An independent, highly intelligent woman with Christian leanings, she helps Ruso with his investigation - when she isn’t ignoring his orders and complicating things for him.
Camma, Asper's lover and the mother of his child, hails from the rebellious and war-like Iceni tribe, several of whom make a very dramatic entrance on horseback near the end of the novel. By contrast, the British residents of Verulamium are Catuvellauni, a tribe that is loyal to Rome. As for Tilla (real name: Darlughdacha), she belongs to the Brigantes, who live in the north of Britannia.
“The Britons are a tricky bunch,” a Roman official tells Ruso some 60 years after the real-life Boudica, queen of the Iceni, led a rebellion against Roman rule. “Even the ones who speak Latin and know how to use a bathhouse.”
Downie offers up a couple of not-very-convincing false leads as she works her way toward revealing who killed whom and why. But neither the reader nor Ruso sees these dead ends as plausible, and when Ruso finally sorts things out, we are left with a satisfying conclusion . . . and a reminder that justice could be elusive in the Roman Empire.
Britannia’s procurator, who is in charge of collecting the province’s taxes, hires Ruso to track down Julius Asper, a missing tax collector from Verulamium (present-day St. Albans), a town a few miles north of Londinium.
Asper disappeared while he supposedly was en route to Londinium to deliver Verulamium’s taxes, so the initial assumption is that Asper and his brother, with whom he was traveling, made off with the missing 7,000 denarii.
Then Asper turns up dead in a Londinium inn, and a hastily scribbled but incomplete letter found under his bed claims he has found incriminating evidence of . . . something. Even as Ruso tries to sort out who murdered Asper and what he had uncovered, Asper's lover Camma shows up and gives birth to his son in the home where Ruso and Tilla are staying.
Theories abound. Were Asper and his brother accosted by bandits who robbed and killed both of them? Did the brother murder Asper and make off with the loot? Or was the killer Caratius, the cuckolded Verulamium politician who is Camma's husband?
Downie’s Medicus series is entertaining for a variety of reasons, including the fact that, as a doctor, the jaded but ever well-intentioned Ruso has a different take on life in the Roman Empire than do the more traditional investigators who normally populate mysteries set in Ancient Rome.
Moreover, with the exception of the third book in the series, which brought Ruso back home to his native Gaul, Ruso always finds himself in Britannia. Although several writers have conjured up detectives who ply their trade in Ancient Rome, Britannia is an unusual setting for this subgenre. (Rosemary Rowe also has a series set in this time and place.)
The locale has its advantages, not least because it allows Downie to explore the tensions that continued to exist during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian between the already well-established Roman occupiers and some native Britons, as well as the conflicting outlooks and allegiances that divided the Britons themselves.
The Romano-British culture that had developed by 120 A.D. is epitomized by Tilla, a native-born Briton who has made her peace with the empire and its foreign ways while remaining true to her tribal roots. An independent, highly intelligent woman with Christian leanings, she helps Ruso with his investigation - when she isn’t ignoring his orders and complicating things for him.
Camma, Asper's lover and the mother of his child, hails from the rebellious and war-like Iceni tribe, several of whom make a very dramatic entrance on horseback near the end of the novel. By contrast, the British residents of Verulamium are Catuvellauni, a tribe that is loyal to Rome. As for Tilla (real name: Darlughdacha), she belongs to the Brigantes, who live in the north of Britannia.
“The Britons are a tricky bunch,” a Roman official tells Ruso some 60 years after the real-life Boudica, queen of the Iceni, led a rebellion against Roman rule. “Even the ones who speak Latin and know how to use a bathhouse.”
Downie offers up a couple of not-very-convincing false leads as she works her way toward revealing who killed whom and why. But neither the reader nor Ruso sees these dead ends as plausible, and when Ruso finally sorts things out, we are left with a satisfying conclusion . . . and a reminder that justice could be elusive in the Roman Empire.
