Four for a Boy [Hardcover]

Gang-plagued streets, politicians plotting each other's downfall, poverty and homelessness existing side-by-side with manifest wealth--no, this isn’t modern-day Washington, D.C., but rather 6th-century Constantinople, as portrayed by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer in Four for a Boy. A prequel to their three previous novels featuring John the Eunuch, Lord Chamberlain to Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, this nimble and scrupulously plotted tale finds John still a mercenary-turned-slave in the palace of Justinian's predecessor, Justin I. He hardly seems the right man to take on a "defense of the empire." Yet after a philanthropist is murdered in the city's Great Church, where he’d gone to visit a controversial statue of Christ, John is assigned, along with a German palace guard (and fellow pagan), to ferret out the killer and maybe also to act the role of spy in a web of rivalries involving the current and future emperors, as well as an imperious city prefect--"the Gourd"--with a misshapen head and supposedly magical powers. Not until a marble importer is slain does a solution to these odd crimes emerge.

Reed and Mayer excel at crafting royal intrigues, especially the plot by Justinian’s mendacious lover, Theodora, to wrest control of the former Eastern Roman Empire from Justin, whose senescence has him parlaying at length with his dead wife. They are clever, too, in creating action sequences (such as one in which John tries to "fly" from pursuers on Icarus-like wings) that fit their historical setting. It's only too bad that the authors don’t do more in this prequel to fill in John’s backstory, and that they force him to spend most of his time here in an annoying pique, his violent castration and lowly position frustrating his desire to return the affections of a senator's daughter. --J. Kingston Pierce

In this captivating prequel set in sixth-century Constantinople, the fourth in Reed and Mayer's well-received historical series (Three for a Letter, etc.), the future emperor Justinian asks a young slave named John the Eunuch to investigate the murder of philanthropist Hypatius, struck down while examining the controversial Christ statue he and three others have given to the city's Great Church. Discounting rumors of a political plot, John undertakes a search for the truth that will lead him from opulent palace to squalid hospice, and to meetings with such memorable characters as the na‹ve Lady Anna and the quirky Avis, who lives in a virtual aviary and is convinced he will fly someday. Written with humor and pathos, this superior historical is sure to please existing fans and send new ones in search of the rest of the series.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Here, from this talented husband-and-wife team, is the fourth John the Eunuch mystery. The authors aren't professional historians, but their historical mysteries are sharper, more realistic, and certainly more enjoyable than many written by professionals. This one takes us back to the beginning of John's sleuthing adventures (the year 525, to be exact), when the former mercenary was a mere slave in the service of the Emperor Justin. On his deathbed, the emperor seems to be carrying on conversations with his deceased wife. Meanwhile, Justin's successor, Justinian, nephew to the emperor, may have been poisoned, and someone has just murdered a noted philanthropist. Justinian fears that someone is trying to make sure he doesn't succeed to the throne, and to help get to the bottom of the plot, he recruits a man no one would ever suspect to be an investigator: John the Eunuch. This installment of the series is as devilishly convoluted as its predecessors, and fans will relish the extra thrill of seeing how John was launched on the career that eventually finds him working as Justinian's Lord Chamberlain. At some point, every great series needs an "origin story," and this one's a real corker. David Pitt
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