The Germanicus Mosaic (Rosemary Rowe, 1999)

Back in the day I cut my teeth on Roman mysteries with Steven Saylor and I still stand by his Gordianus series as the gold standard of the genre. I tried Lindsey Davis but I'm a little daunted by the 20-book Falco series, which she is now passing along to Falco's daughter. Maybe later on that one. Meanwhile, I've hit the first books of some other series: SPQR by John Maddox Roberts (13 books), the Corvinus series by David Wishart (14 books), and the up-and-coming Ruso series by Ruth Downie (6 books). Also I've checked out a few minor series as well: the Athenian mysteries by Gary Corby (3 books...and why let the Romans have all the fun?), Roman Noir by Kelli Stanley (2 books), and on my yet-to-read listen Bruce MacBain's Pliny the Younger mysteries (2 books). I bet I'm missing some other good ones, though it's a real minefield of dodgy self-published gobbledegook out there. I'm too busy reading real published books to handle vanity projects - sorry! Also, there's a lot of books set in the time period that are plenty good, but not really mysteries. I take those as they come, but they fall into another reading project altogether.

Anyway, a quick word on Rosemary Rowe's Libertus series, weighing in at a lofty 13 books. As I mentioned before, I'm a little weary of the series that take place in Britain. It's sort of like Western mentality, but set in the UK rather than the USA and British authors tend to be more guilty of this that their American counterparts. However Libertus is a little different than his peers. First off, he's not a doctor (unlike Ruso and Arcturus from the Roman Noir series), he's a freedman (complete with lingering slavery issues), and fully Celtic. Also, the setting is much later than all of the other series. In fact this is the latest of them all, falling during the reign of Commodus, not exactly the dreamy heyday of Trajan and Hadrian's empire, nor the intriguing time of the Julio-Claudians or the old Republic. The mystery itself is fairly Agatha Christie grade for the first two-thirds, but there is an impressive twist at the end. The next one is on my list, but I've got some others to tend to, so it may be a little while before I get to it.