Publishers Weekly
The salacious underside of Roman-occupied Britain comes to life in Britisher Downie's debut. Gaius Petrius Ruso, a military medicus (or doctor), transfers to the 20th Legion in the remote Britannia port of Deva (now Chester) to start over after a ruinous divorce and his father's death. Things go downhill from there. His quarters are filthy and vermin-filled, and his superior at the hospital is a petty tyrant. Gaius rescues and buys an injured slave girl, Tilla, from her abusive master, but she refuses to talk, can't cook and costs more to keep than he can afford. Meanwhile, young women from the local bordello keep turning up dead, and nobody is interested in investigating. Gaius becomes a reluctant detective, but his sleuthing threatens to get him killed and leaves him scant time to work on the first-aid guide he's writing to help salvage his finances. Tilla plots her escape as she recovers from her injuries, and just when Ruso becomes attached to her, she runs away, complicating his personal life and his investigation. Downie's auspicious debut sparkles with beguiling characters and a vividly imagined evocation of a hazy frontier. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Is it a mystery? Is it historical fiction? Or is it simply a good novel that uses suspicious death-two working girls have disappeared from Merula's bar-and an antique setting-the Romans have conquered Britannia, where our doctor hero serves at an army outpost-to explore loyalty, compassion, and the ticklish relationship between the powerful and the powerless. Though he once saved the emperor's life, Gaius Petrius Ruso is now stuck in humble digs at the northernmost rim of the empire, divorced from a shrewish wife and trying to save enough money to cover embarrassing debts accumulated by his scheming father, now deceased. Then he intervenes to help a slave girl with a broken arm and ends up buying her. He nurses her back to health and eventually boards her at Merula's, thus getting himself involved in the case of the two missing prostitutes, which leads to corruption in high places (where else?). The plot is suspenseful and fluidly told, but the evolving bond between master and servant is at the heart of this excellent first work, as Downie carefully details the pained conscience of the former and the latter's sorrow that both her family and her country have been ravaged. It's no surprise that Downie won the Fay Weldon section of BBC3's End of Story competition. Highly recommended.-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Dark doings in Roman-occupied "Britannia" are investigated in this nifty historical mystery, the award-winning English author's first novel. The title character, Gaius Petreius Ruso, is an army physician attached to a legion based in Deva (later Chester). He's recently divorced, overworked, at constant odds with military authorities and further burdened by demands made by his civilian brother on behalf of their financially strapped family. But these problems are trivial compared with the nightmare that builds from the discovery of a murdered slave girl's body, then the rescue of a girl named Tilla with a broken arm evidently caused by a savage beating, then another female slave's dead body. Ruso "buys" the uncommunicative Tilla and installs her as his house servant and cook, eventually gleaning from her information that suggests somebody is kidnapping freeborn girls and selling them as slaves. The unusual suspects include bar owner (and probable procurer) Merula, sinister entrepreneur Claudius Innocens (identified, in the amusingly annotated list of "Characters" that precedes the narrative, as "a sleazebag") and Ruso's Uriah Heep-like nemesis, nitpicking hospital administrator Priscus. The mystery is a good one, enriched with enigmatic images and episodes (an "invisible dog" hounding the compound, a suspicious case of food poisoning), and a secondary enigma buried in the identity and nature of the goddess whom Tilla stoically worships. But the real achievement here is the lavishly, often hilariously detailed portrayal of the world that absorbs Ruso's exhausted wits and energies (Downie even manages a few good jokes about English cuisine). And in cheerful mutual insults exchanged betweenRuso and his colleague and rival Valens, we hear again the effervescent voices of M*A*S*H's Hawkeye and Trapper John. And Ruso is a wonderful character, fueled by a dyspeptic machismo and sullen charm reminiscent of Harrison Ford in his heyday. A charming novel.
