Review of Dead Men’s Sandals by David Wishart, independently published. 2020

“The litter lads pulled up outside Eutacticus’s gates. We de-chaired under the watchful eye of the gate-troll and carried on up the drive past topiaried hedges studded with serious bronzes and enough marble gods, goddesses and nymphs to equip a pantheon. Greek originals or specially commissioned, probably, the lot of them: in Sempronius Eutacticus’s case, crime didn’t only pay, it came with a six-figure annual bonus and an expense account you could’ve run a small province on.”

Some folk will know already that my favourite fictional detective is Marcus Valerius Corvinus, first-century AD aristocratic Roman layabout who has a distaste for the life of public service and self-aggrandizement expected of his class, and a penchant for furkling about in the dirty laundry of people who’d prefer it to stay hidden. He also talks a bit like a Raymond Chandler narrator.

Some of the Corvinus books are political; this is not. Corvinus owes a favour to a character we have met several times before, the crime cartel boss Eutacticus, who is not one to forget what he is owed. He sends Corvinus to Brundisium, to investigate the murder of the local crime boss there, who was a friend, in so far as Eutacticus had any. The dead man’s granddaughter had been engaged to the son of a long-time rival, in an apparent business deal to unite the two crime families, and it looks as if this might have led to his murder. But an extremely valuable antique ring he had given the prospective bride is also missing, and though Eutacticus wants to know its current whereabouts, he is oddly reticent about it. So is everyone else….

As usual there are plenty of suspects and Corvinus’s wife Perilla plays a major role in helping him think things through and discard various theories. Obviously, this being a whodunnit, I’m not about to give plot details away, but in fact there is an unusual twist to the solution, which requires the reader to rethink the words “guilt”, “justice” and “perpetrator”. Another interesting development is a woman heavily into Eastern religion. This is reminiscent of a character in the earlier book Family Commitments, Pomponia Graecina, who was festooned with amulets and talked to trees. Graecina is an historical person who would, somewhat later in life, be reputed to be among the earliest Roman Christians, and though the character in this book is a member of the cult of Isis, her inclusion does indicate a growing  movement away from Olympianism – not that Corvinus would be anywhere near as interested in that as he would in what the local wineshop is serving.

This series works for me as much because of the characters as the plots: Corvinus and his somewhat anarchic household are eminently believable and feel like friends by now. Also the books don’t mind tackling questions you don’t always expect to see in genre novels, as indicated above. Another and arguably even more daring example of this in the series is Solid Citizens, reviewed here.

One minor quibble: Wishart as usual does give us a list of characters, but given that his hero's name is Marcus, he could have made life a whole lot easier by not giving one of his crime dynasties the family name of Marcius and another character the personal name of Marcus.

A minor quibble indeed, given the gratitude I felt when the latest Corvinus came through the lockdowned door.