Solid Citizens

From the outset, anachronistic language and Britishisms combine to detract from Wishart’s otherwise solid 15th Marcus Corvinus first-century A.D. Roman historical (after 2012’s No Cause for Concern). The opening—“I like the Winter Festival. Oh yeah, sure, it can be a complete pain in the rectum”—instantly shatters the illusion that the narrator is speaking to the reader from his actual time period. When the bludgeoned corpse of censor-elect Quintus Caesius (“a pretty big cheese,” as Corvinus puts it) is found outside a brothel in the Alban Hills, where Corvinus is on vacation visiting his adopted daughter and her family, the area’s senate turns to Corvinus, whose reputation as a renowned detective has proceeded him, to solve the crime. The investigation is interesting enough, if not exactly original, but dialogue reminiscent of a 1950s PI film (“Not you, sunshine”) is a fatal flaw. (Nov.)