Now he has a new problem: a slave who won’t talk and can’t cook, and drags trouble in her wake. Before he knows it, Ruso is caught in the middle of an investigation into the deaths of prostitutes working out of the local bar. A few years earlier, after he rescued Emperor Trajan from an earthquake in Antioch, Ruso seemed headed for glory: now he’s living among heathens in a vermin-infested bachelor pad and must summon all his forensic knowledge to find a killer who may be after him next.
Who are the true barbarians, the conquered or the conquerors? It’s up to Ruso—certainly the most likeable sleuth to come out of the Roman Empire—to discover the truth. With a gift for comic timing and historic detail, Ruth Downie has conjured an ancient world as raucous and real as our own.
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An interesting little mystery that pulls you in pretty much from the start. The pacing is fairly casual as the author follows Ruso through his daily activities, and as he tries to avoid getting caught up with the lives of the girls at Merula's bar, but only succeeds in becoming more tangled up in their affairs. It all begins pretty much on page one when he has to examine a corpse that's brought into the hospital - an unidentified female, naked, with all of her hair shorn off. All signs point to foul play, but as no one knows who she is, and all signs are that she was likely a prostitute, no one really cares - except for Ruso, for all that he tries not to care.
