LAST RITES by David
Wishart
Hodder & Stoughton - August 2001
ISBN 0340768851 - Hardcover
Historical Mystery - 1st Century (Reign of Tiberius), Rome
Reviewed by Rachel
A Hyde, MyShelf.com
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Marcus Corvinius is
back in Rome after his self-imposed exile in Athens. The morning after
the sacred all-female rites of the Good Goddess a Vestal is found dead
in a way that could be either murder or suicide. Either is going to cause
a lot of problems so senator Lucius Arruntius turns to Marcus to help
him out. Instantly he is on dangerous ground, trying to find out if she
was seeing a man and if she had any enemies. Could the replacement flute
girl at the party have been a man in disguise? Aided in his investigations
by another lively flute girl and thwarted at every turn (not leastways
by his wife's newfangled Greek clock) Marcus soon finds that he might
just have bitten off more than he can chew.
If anybody reading this
novel can guess whodunit then they ought to win a prize; it is surely one
of the most convoluted and intricate cases imaginable and none the less
enjoyable for not being a straight "puzzle" mystery. As ever with
Wishart's books the plot comes first and the actual ambience second for
although his Rome is well researched it all sounds just too modern at times
and Marcus is in many ways more akin to a time traveler from today than
an actual Roman. The Ancient Romans were sophisticated in many ways, far
more so than people would be for nearly two thousand years but this is still
the ancient world and a vast gulf separates then and now. Somehow I didn't
feel that the gulf was being represented. This gripe aside - and it seems
to be a gripe that I find with almost all novels about Ancient Rome - this
is one hell of a well-plotted mystery that grabs the reader and won't let
go. |