Three Roman Mystery Series: comparison, by CeeViews

I found two new Roman mystery series recently and launched myself into them, hoping to find another like the Marcus Didius Falco series, by Lindsey Davis. But the first lines alone tell the difference. From SPQR XIII, THE YEAR OF CONFUSION, by John Maddox Roberts, "There was nothing wrong with our calendar." Steven Saylor, in THE TRIUMPH OF CAESAR, scores better, with "I heard that you were dead." In SILVER PIGS, the first Falco novel, the tone for the series is set: "When the girl came running up the steps, I decided she was wearing far too many clothes."

Roberts' hero is the senator, Metullus, who rarely leaves the upper class world. Saylor's Gordianus is sixty-four, and a retired "Finder." When Gordianus stirs to action, he takes a trip to the "dangerous Subura region," where there are "fewer togas and more tunics." Falco lives in the world of tunics, often wine-stained and moth-eaten. His only toga comes from his dead big brother Festus, a soldier-hero, and Falco hates it. The wool is hot and horrible to drape properly. Besides, Falco has already informed us in the first chapter that togas were whitened with the ammonia from urine.

Davis's detail for Roman life astounds. Where Roberts describes shouting workmen removing the scaffolding from a public building, Davis informs us they are cursing slaves, wearing one-armed red tunics. Falco, looking around for a diversion, notes that the Forum steps are crowded with illegal touts and overpriced market stalls. He considers overturning some melons, but settles for some copperware instead, so as not to lose the melonseller his profits. Davis establishes the scene in three sentences and kicks over the copper stall in the fourth, never losing momentum. Before SILVER PIGS is half-way through, Falco has gone undercover as a slave in a silver mine, and been rescued barely alive by a snooty senator's daughter, Helena, who drives a pony cart like a Maserati.

Lindsey Davis states that she wrote the first Falco book as a spoof, setting loose a classic PI in imperial Rome. I can't believe she's serious, but the forthright face on her website doesn't lie about anything. Fascinating description, fast action, and Falco's trademark sarcastic humor combine in an unforgettable series.

QUICK TAKE: PLAYING FOR PIZZA, John Grisham

In a story that promises fun, Grisham leaves his legal thrillers for this tale of a third-string quarterback who relocates to Italy.

MAGIC STRIKES, by Ilona Andrews

This second outing of Kate Daniels and her magic-afflicted Atlanta has more romance, as Kate teams up with her were-panther friend Jim and the sexy shapeshifter Curran, the Beast Lord.

THE FIERY WOOING OF MORDRED, by P.G. Wodehouse

P.G. Wodehouse, the well-known British humorist, has created many enduring characters. One of those is Mr. Mulliner, who has endless nephews.

In this short story Mordred Mulliner falls in love with a girl who lives in a white elephant of a country home. At least it's heavily insured. When he visits her all his competitors are big-game hunter types. Morosely, he retires to write a poem. What a pity that he's got this absent-minded habit of tossing his cigarettes into the waste-paper basket.

How now brown cow-Commentary, CeeViews

I have a T-shirt which states "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows them down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar." Okay, now that's a lot for one t-shirt, but it reinforces what a devil of a language English really is. So how do we learn it? Slowly, if not at birth. Miss a cue or two, and pow, you're out. But we mowed the hay, plowed the snow, rowed the rivers, watched the towers, and what a fight we fought. I offer the following new doggerel to help you flow down the stream of pronunciation easier.

"The cow and sow just had a row
about the way to mow.
Oh wow, you really don't know how,
Called out the bossy crow.
So Pow! and Zow! they knocked him out,
And then they watched a show."

Pausing only to polish the Polish silver, I remain
Your scribe.

MAGIC BITES, by Ilona Andrews

MAGIC BITES' heroine, Kate Daniels, is a magic-wielding mercenary who navigates the dangerous underworld of an Atlanta which experiences waves of magic and tech. She inserts herself into the investigation of her high-ranking friend's death, in the manner of all PI's. The job takes her into some of the nastiest areas of the city, places ruined by by magic attack and by the evildoers who dwell in them. Along the way she gathers allies, including her friend Jim, a werepanther, and the Beast Lord, the leader of all the shapeshifters in the city. The plot is predictable, and we're not surprised when she experiences enormous physical damage, but rescues the city.

This book is interesting to me mainly because of the vampires, whose description and roles are far different from anything I've seen before. Far from being sexually exotic and dangerous, they're a ruined humanoid species with little brainpower, and less free will. In an insectile manner they cling to ceilings and crawl down walls. They can't even move by themselves, but are "piloted" by others who use them as remotes for observation and attack. But dang, wouldn't you know it, there are some free, unpiloted vampires after all, and when they attack, I'm very much reminded of the hordes of orcs in LORD OF THE RINGS.

It's about time someone took the undead to task, reducing them back to the monsters they were before dozens of books glamorized them.

A RAG, A BONE, AND A HANK OF HAIR, by Jonathan Gash

Lovejoy, no first name, is a scruffy English antique dealer who loves the ladies. He's perpetually down on his luck, despite his amazing ability to sense real antiques which makes him a "divvy." He hates the botched frauds of others, yet is often driven by need to create fakes of his own. However, he crafts them with techniques as close to the original as he can, almost an homage.

In RAG, he is commanded to leave his East Anglia home for London by a criminal antique dealer, Dosh Callaghan, who thinks he's been gypped. "Find me who duffed my padpas."

Duff means to fake. Padparadshas, padpas, from Sri Lanka, are sapphires which are odd colored, orangey pink. Gash doles out this information after enlightening us on faking Holbein miniatures, painted on modern ivorine, a plastic, instead of ivory, and after Lovejoy hears the call of a real, beautiful fruitwood box, found in the modest barrow of a dealer in the midst of the Portobello open air market.

Lovejoy completes the job for Dosh suspiciously easily, but finds Colette, a old friend of his who has lost her antique store and is down to rags and a handcart. She's been reduced to this by the brutal Dieter Gluck, who cheated her and drove her husband to the grave. As Lovejoy prepares to work a scam to catch Gluck, he stumbles across the mystery of Colette's teenage son, who can tell real antiques by their touch. The plot takes many leisurely detours into the antiques world, yet we are always rewarded by Gash's enthusiasm.