The Price of Freedom

In Rowe’s superb 17th whodunit set in second-century Roman Britain (after 2016’s The Ides of June), Libertus, a Gloucester pavement-maker with a knack for solving mysteries, is sorry to hear from his patron, Marcus Aurelius Septimus—“one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in all Britannia”—that Acacius Flauccus, a tax official from whom Libertus was anticipating a lucrative commission, has hanged himself. The note left near Flauccus’s corpse reveals that he took his life out of shame for having lost tax revenue at the gaming table. Certain that the death was a suicide, Marcus is concerned that local government officials will need to repay the shortfall in taxes. Evidence that Flauccus was robbed before his death, however, would shift that financial responsibility to the dead man’s estate. Marcus dispatches Libertus to investigate, and the artisan soon finds more questions than answers. Besides effortlessly integrating such period details as telling time in an era before clocks into the narrative, Rowe perfectly balances character and plot.[em] (Feb.) [/em]