In Paperback: Dark Omens

Dark Omens (A Libertus Mystery)by Rosemary RoweSevern House, 2013 New in paperback from Severn House is the 14th novel by Rosemary Rowe (the pen name Rosemary Aiken uses for her Roman murder mysteries) starring Longinus Flavius Libertus, a freedman and fairly prosperous craftsman in second-century Glevum (present-day Gloucester), far at the edge of the Roman empire ruled with fear and loathing by Commodus, when there's "a spy in every household" and characters retail the horror stories from Rome with relish:

Have you heard the latest tales? They say that Commodus ordered the execution of a whole town because he thought that someone in it looked at him askance! And you know that he served up a roasted dwarf to entertain his friends ...

Dark Omens opens in bleak midwinter, the Kalends of Januarius in the year AD 192, when everybody in Glevum is putting on their best clothes and cheeriest demeanor to celebrate the holiday that Christians will later unceremoniously co-opt. Thus we find Libertus in his shop wearing his finest toga and quietly beaming with the pride of his prosperity - unlike so many sleuths in historical mysteries, Libertus has an actual job: he's a working businessman specialzing in the crafting and laying of the mosaics Romans use to floor their homes. Indeed, the holiday is usually good for business:

The feast of new beginnings is a traditional time for wives to plan improvements to their homes - such as fresh pavements for the dining room - and many a husband will send his steward round that day with seasonal gifts of sweet-tasting food or small-denomination coins, and a casual request for me to call. (Not that every such enquiry will guarantee a customer, but it is a rare year when I do not get one profitable contract out of New Year's Day.)

Far more usual is the way trouble continues to find our hero (and his spirited and wonderfully maladroit adopted son Junio), and so it happens in Dark Omens: Gaius Mommius Genialis, a haugthy magistrate from Dorn ("he spoke as if this were a major town, instead of an insignificant small tax-collection centre further to the north"), comes to Libertus's shop seeking flooring work done fast: his brother's young widow died in a boating accident, and before Genialis can marry his brother's young widow, she insists the mosaic - unluckily depicting a boating scene - be replaced. Genialis wants her dowrie in order to finance a run for office, so Libertus and Junio are pressed into service. But the more they learn - from household slaves and from the young widow herself - about the dead brother, the more a local mystery begins to loom like the rumor of an oncoming murderous snowstorm bearing down on Glevum.Fourteen novels is a long time, and by now Rowe knows precisely what she's about. The whole setting of Roman Britain draws pedants like an outhouse draws flies, and long-time readers will perhaps agree that the excess exposition was a problem in the earliest volumes of this series. That's all been purged away with practice and confidence long since, leaving only a few traces (we're told that the dye Genialis uses on his hair, for instance, is made of "leech and vinegar" - when just telling us the hair is dyed would have been sufficient to make us dislike the man just that little bit more). The storytelling here is taut and entirely controlled - and as more dead bodies start showing up, Libertus once again becomes the most convincing, albeit unlikely, hero in the ancient Rome-murder mystery racket. Severn House does a somewhat abysmal job at marketing their own books, but you should give them your business despite themselves! You won't regret it.