Review of Trade Secrets by David Wishart, pub Severn House 2015

[sheenaghpugh]

“It was well into the afternoon when I rolled back in, by which time the poetry gang had usually dispersed to their respective homes, leaving the Corvinus household a blessedly poetry-free zone. 

Only this time, as it transpired when I came into the atrium holding my customary welcome-home wine cup, they hadn’t. There was one of them left. 

Bugger.”
 

Not only has Corvinus, despite staying in the wine-shop all afternoon, failed to avoid all Perilla’s poetry pals, this one has a murder for him to solve; her businessman brother has been found dead. And as if that weren’t enough, Marilla and Clarus, visiting from Castrimoenium, come home excited at having all but witnessed a second murder… 

So Corvinus has two to solve at once, and the question is one of motive. Gaius, the brother of Perilla’s friend, was a legitimate trader but also a ladies’ man who had infuriated at least three husbands, not to mention his own wife, while Correllius, the victim Marilla and Clarus found, was a distinctly dodgy import-exporter with many business enemies. But is the question of motive in each case as simple as it looks? And might there even be a connection? 

This one is set partly in Rome, partly in Ostia; we meet Lippillus, who has been transferred to a new district, and prickly next-door neighbour Petillius, who has another spat with the Corvinus menage. The detective work itself involves making connections between seemingly unrelated events and people, and is as fascinating as ever. There’s also a sense of our protagonists getting older; Corvinus is considering renting a holiday home by the sea and talking about wanting a quiet life, not that he is ever liable to get (or settle for) such a thing. One of the best features of this series is the convincing way it lets characters age and develop. But Corvinus’s bolshie chef Meton is still on his usual truculent form when explaining a fracas with next door’s cook: 

“I was at Mama Silvia’s stall in the market like, buyin’ pears, and he, that’s that bastard Paullus, was standin’ behind in the queue. I says to Mama, “I’ll take some of them Dolabellans for a compote, love”, an’ Paullus says “Nah, you want Laterans for that”, then I turns round and says “Rubbish, Laterans ‘re too moist for a compote”, then he says “Moist? The way you cook, your lot wouldn’t notice if you used bloody Falernians”. So I picked up a melon and belted him with it.” 

As I’ve explained before, these are catch-up reviews which I’ve done because I discovered that some Wishart fans were unaware of his changes of publisher and had missed a few. You're up to date now, and can keep up with future events at his website https://www.david-wishart.co.uk/