Trade Secrets

Those comfortable with modern slang in their historical whodunits (“OK, pal, keep your hair on”) will welcome Wishart’s 17th mystery set in Imperial Rome (after 2014’s Finished Business). It’s 41 C.E., and Claudius has just succeeded Caligula as emperor. Series sleuth Marcus Corvinus is adjusting to his new role as a grandfather when Tullia Gemella, a friend of his wife, asks him to solve the murder of her brother, Gaius Tullius, part owner of an import-export business, who was stabbed to death in an alley. Meanwhile, Corvinus’s adopted daughter, Valeria Marilla, and her husband, Clarus, visit the Pollio Library, where they notice a man on a bench who appears to be sleeping. After he topples over, they discover that he was knifed in the back—and that he apparently died of apoplexy an hour earlier. Corvinus proves an astute sleuth as he tackles the nicely constructed puzzles, though the political background of the times is less central to the plot than in Steven Saylor’s superior Gordianus novels. (Feb.)