Among the various Roman detective series I'm been sampling, I didn't have very high expectations for Bruce Macbain's Pliny the Younger mysteries. It's on a smaller press (Poisoned Pen) and has the lowest ratings of any of the series among Goodreads members. Add to that my reluctance to have an actual historical figure holding down the primary detective role, and you can understand my reluctance going into Roman Games.Happily, I came out the other side pleasantly surprised. Working in the book's favor is the setting (Rome, rather than the disproportionately represented Britain) and an unusual time period (the final days of Emperor Domitian's reign). While Macbain does bend the rules a bit (e.g. making it less historical and more fiction) it isn't too awful and he's upfront in the afterword, no pun intended, about the changes.
As far as being a mystery, it's a good one. It kept me guessing (incorrectly) right up to the very end. I daresay I had enough fun reading it that the anachronisms didn't have time to crawl under my skin. Now somebody phone up Conn Iggulden and give him some $%$%ing lessons on how to write decent historical fiction!
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