The Germanicus Mosaic [Paperback]

 

 

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Rosemary's Rowe's Libertus mystery opener is a neatly styled murder mystery. 'The Germanicus Mosaic' centres around the murder of the ex-centurion Crassus Germanicus who is found under his hypocaust at his villa after a procession at Gleva and the disappearance of his personal slave, part time impersonator, Daedulus. Germanicus is an altogether unsavoury character who delighted in tormenting people (such as beating his barber slave, Paulus, for nicking him during shaving, forcing the tenured slave musician Rufus to both watch and listen as he abused Rufus' slave love and constantly fining the head slave, Andrethus)
We meet many other assorted characters:the gatekeeper Aulus (an apparently inept informer for Septimus), Germanicus' brother, the newly christian Lucius and hear about his ex-wife, Regina, amongst others.
All in all we end up with many people at the villa with a motive to murder the man but lacking opportunity. Into the mix steps Longinus Flavius Libertus, a self-deprecating sleuth, ex-Celt who was taken into slavery, then later manumitted and now works as a 'pavement' specialist (had to wince at that as he is really a mosaicist) under the patronage of the senatorial class Marcus Septimus, client of the governor Pertinax. With Libertus is his slave, Junio, and the pair of them set about unravelling the complexities behind the motive in true Holmesque manner - with a fine eye for detail. With Marcus' constant hasty desire to approportion blame at the first sniff of a linked motive and suspect it falls to Libertus to remove the web that implicates other innocent parties and discover all of the events leading up to the night in question. As he succinctly puts it 'one murder leads to another' as we discover that Regina was also murdered and buried under the very librarium mosaic that Libertus had lain some weeks earlier. So, by the time we figure out the truth we are running fult tilt to catch up with the culprit(s) before another innocent dies and Libertus manages to get the protagonist(s) to ingest the poison meant for him. Poison is a common theme throughout.
As a first offering, Rowe has not done too badly. Admittedly, the plot moves along simply, but the characterisation and sleuthing is excellent. Libertus is constantly under pressure to discern reality and lies lest innocent parties take the blame so the novel is almost screenplay in its delivery. Nevertheless, the promise is there and I have no doubt as Libertus' continues to sleuth that these mysteries will become a delightful addition to the genre. If you're a fan of the genre, certainly worth delving into. It is only a pity I did not spot this novel when it came out four years ago.

The "hero" in this mystery is a freedman turned mosaic maker who is uncreatively called "Libertus" a name that basically just means "freedman". The mystery and the way it is solved isn't particularly complicated; it seems more a matter of luck and logic than investigation as is the case in books by Steven Saylor. Unlike characters in Lindsey Davis' books, the "hero" and his own slave, Junio, are both likeable and you want them to succeed. Rowe has done a good job of trying to explore how Romanization affected distant parts of the Roman Empire as well as exploring the reality that slavery was a social institution embraced and used by everyone, ex-slaves and freeborn, wealthy and poor. What would be truly interesting and difficult to do would be to have a slave who is a "hero" in these ancient mysteries, someone who could really explain this darker institutioin that seems so favored to modern authors yet so distant from their experiences.

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