OCTOBER 2021 - AudioFile
During the Roman festival Saturnalia, Britannia-born Flavia Albia, whom narrator Jane Collingwood makes sound rather patrician, is once again solving mysteries. Flavia Albia is a private informer/detective who has succeeded her father, Marcus Didius Falco. Together with her husband, Aedile Tiberius Manlius Faustus, she investigates crimes, including murder, the theft and distribution of spoiled nuts crucial to Saturnalia, and a missing wife. Conjuring class-appropriate accents, Collingwood voices Aedile Tiberius as a stuffy military leader-turned-politician. Dromo the slave is portrayed as unctuous, the nurse as put-upon, and the nut thief as bombastic, while the children come through as carefree and joyous. The mixture of accents and the clarity of Flavia Albia’s descriptions combine to create a believable romp through Rome in 89 CE. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
05/10/2021
Davis’s strong ninth mystery set in ancient Rome starring private informer Flavia Albia (after 2020’s The Grove of the Caesars) finds Flavia’s husband, Tiberius Manlius, a magistrate in charge of the ancient Roman equivalent of consumer protection, drawn into his own inquiry. Nuts being sold in honor of the Saturnalia festival have made several Romans sick. Tiberius’s assistant believes that organized criminals, seeking to eliminate competition by sabotaging rivals in the nut trade, are responsible. Soon after Tiberius begins to investigate, the severed head of their pet sheep is left on their doorstep. With characteristic humorous disdain, Flavia takes the threat in stride (“Criminals can be very blinkered. They do not grasp that a householder and his wife have neither time nor energy to respond to stupid gestures”). After she teams up with Tiberius, they uncover a wide pattern of racketeering that includes murder, public corruption, extortion, and tax fraud. Davis convincingly depicts first-century mobsters, an aspect of ancient Roman criminality that’s been underutilized by authors writing about this period. This series remains as fresh as ever. (July)
Library Journal
02/01/2021
In 89 CE Rome, private informer Flavia Albia has little to do during the raucous festival of Saturnalia but watch husband Tiberius and the Fourth Cohort challenge organized crime over the sale of nuts at the festival. Things change when gang war breaks out and her husband's life is threatened. With a 30,000-copy first printing.
OCTOBER 2021 - AudioFile
During the Roman festival Saturnalia, Britannia-born Flavia Albia, whom narrator Jane Collingwood makes sound rather patrician, is once again solving mysteries. Flavia Albia is a private informer/detective who has succeeded her father, Marcus Didius Falco. Together with her husband, Aedile Tiberius Manlius Faustus, she investigates crimes, including murder, the theft and distribution of spoiled nuts crucial to Saturnalia, and a missing wife. Conjuring class-appropriate accents, Collingwood voices Aedile Tiberius as a stuffy military leader-turned-politician. Dromo the slave is portrayed as unctuous, the nurse as put-upon, and the nut thief as bombastic, while the children come through as carefree and joyous. The mixture of accents and the clarity of Flavia Albia’s descriptions combine to create a believable romp through Rome in 89 CE. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
