Ovid (David Wishart, 1995)

This is book 23 of 52. I decided that it's better to mention this in the body instead of the title, because the whole "of 52" thing was getting repetitive (update from December 2016: I've "stripped the 'of 52' notes from all posts, so don't worry if this doesn't make sense). I'm still just tagging these as "books" for now because I consider this a separate project from the main purpose of the blog. Maybe next year I'll break the books off from this into their own blog, but I'm too far along for this year to switch gears.

Anyway, I did a fair amount of historical mystery reading from the Roman period back in the day, but it was mostly centered on one author, Steven Saylor. I still contend that Saylor remains the gold standard of the genre because he avoids the three great pitfalls that trip up other entries in the genre:

1. Total disregard for the historical record. (Conn Iggulden)
2. A distracting amount of slang, usually laced with American or British idioms. (Iggulden, Lindsey Davis, Simon Scarrow)
3. Set in Britain! (Davis - initially, Ruth Downie, Kelli Stanley)

Other than Iggulden, who I consider to be a hack in this genre, none of these authors are bad and I have no quibbles about continue to read their series. I've only read one book by John Maddox Roberts (SPQR) and he seems to be more deft than most at keeping away from these zones. I'm absolutely boggled by why so many authors want to set their books in Roman Britain when all the real political intrigue was happening it Rome. Perhaps they are trying to capture a primitive Old West vibe or something. I don't know. Also I've omitted giants like Colleen McCullough and Robert Graves because they didn't write detective-style historical fiction; theirs in more straight up. Technically I should lump Iggulden with them too, but I can't warn people enough about how bad his writing is.

Which bring us to Wishart. David Wishart is guilty of the first two pitfalls, though his author's note is so graceful at the end that I can almost entirely forgive him on point one. The only issue that lingers is the overtly imperial tone, something that really didn't seep in until Vespasian and later. I don't think modern writers give Augustus enough credit for his "smoke and mirrors" job of "restoring" the Republic. Pitfall number two is truly problematic. If his detective, the smart-mouthed Marcus Corvinus, wasn't so darn lovable, I think I probably would have been unable to finish the book. Most of the characters act far more like 20th century British wiseacres than Roman citizens. Also there are way too many double-apostrophe words in the narrative (e.g. wouldn't've, couldn't've) when two words would have sufficed.

Will I continue? Of course! But I've got a full plate, so it may be a while before Germanicus gets a profile here. With something like 15 books in this series (making it I think the second longest in the genre), I've got a near-lifetime of reading enjoyment ahead, presuming Corvinus doesn't outlive his reader!