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50books 2011: the first of the new year
Jan. 2nd, 2011 11:21 amThis would obviously have been credited to last year's account if I had read a little faster, but it does just as well being this year's first completion.
A Murder on the Appian Way is the seventh of Stephen Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa mystery novels, a series set in the waning years of the Roman Republic. In this, the series' protagonist, Gordianus the Finder, is enlisted to find out the circumstances of one of the most famous political murders in the history of the Republic--the killing of Publius Clodius, which sparked riots, the burning of the Senate House, and one of the few instances of martial law in Rome's history (to that date).
Saylor does his usual masterful job with the historical setting. He doesn't work as a professional historian, but he took a doctorate in history and classical studies, and it shows in his keen grasp of the setting and his ability to convey a sense of time and place. Ancient Rome is where these characters live, not just a stage set for a group of modern people in historical costumes to walk and pose. Saylor gives you insights into the larger elements of Roman life (politics, history, the judicial system, social structure and customs) and the smaller ones (food, clothing, transportation, architecture). One of the more interesting sidelights in the story is the Roman legal system and how it was substantially changed at just this time, moving from one in which the principal elements were orations (lasting hours or days) by hired speakers and character testimonies by those who knew the parties but who may have known nothing significant about the actual matter under dispute to a system much more like ours today, where the preponderance of time and attention was spent on witnesses to the actual events in question.
Saylor is also a good writer, and a good mystery writer. His characters are complex and fully realised. His stories aren't simple whodunnits but novels about people who happen to be would up in a mystery. He stands in marked contrast to Laurie King, whose novels I reread from time to time with growing ambivalence. For one thing, he manages to write mysteries in such a way as to supply readers with all the information the detective has, challenging them to make the same deductions and leaps of intuition that the protagonist does (or sometimes fails to); he does not, like King, trot out the explanation at the end, complete with information that the characters never shared with the reader. And most importantly, Saylor has the ability that *so* many other writers, including King, so singularly lack--the ability to include characters familiar to the reader from history (or other fiction) without that painful, unpleasant, self-congratulatory, self-conscious coyness of someone Making a Big Announcement. Saylor treats all his characters as equals, as people, even when their social or potilical standing sets some above others. I think that's why it seems perfectly natural for Gordianus to talk to Cicero, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Cato the Younger without it being unconvincing or stilted.
In summary, the writing is good, the plot is excellent (although I didn't guess one of the major plot twists, I was amused that one or two things that had bothered me, little inconsistencies in the different witnesses' narratives, ended up being significant), the characters are appealing: overall a book I would highly recommend if you enjoy mysteries or are interested in the history of Republican Rome.
A Murder on the Appian Way is the seventh of Stephen Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa mystery novels, a series set in the waning years of the Roman Republic. In this, the series' protagonist, Gordianus the Finder, is enlisted to find out the circumstances of one of the most famous political murders in the history of the Republic--the killing of Publius Clodius, which sparked riots, the burning of the Senate House, and one of the few instances of martial law in Rome's history (to that date).
Saylor does his usual masterful job with the historical setting. He doesn't work as a professional historian, but he took a doctorate in history and classical studies, and it shows in his keen grasp of the setting and his ability to convey a sense of time and place. Ancient Rome is where these characters live, not just a stage set for a group of modern people in historical costumes to walk and pose. Saylor gives you insights into the larger elements of Roman life (politics, history, the judicial system, social structure and customs) and the smaller ones (food, clothing, transportation, architecture). One of the more interesting sidelights in the story is the Roman legal system and how it was substantially changed at just this time, moving from one in which the principal elements were orations (lasting hours or days) by hired speakers and character testimonies by those who knew the parties but who may have known nothing significant about the actual matter under dispute to a system much more like ours today, where the preponderance of time and attention was spent on witnesses to the actual events in question.
Saylor is also a good writer, and a good mystery writer. His characters are complex and fully realised. His stories aren't simple whodunnits but novels about people who happen to be would up in a mystery. He stands in marked contrast to Laurie King, whose novels I reread from time to time with growing ambivalence. For one thing, he manages to write mysteries in such a way as to supply readers with all the information the detective has, challenging them to make the same deductions and leaps of intuition that the protagonist does (or sometimes fails to); he does not, like King, trot out the explanation at the end, complete with information that the characters never shared with the reader. And most importantly, Saylor has the ability that *so* many other writers, including King, so singularly lack--the ability to include characters familiar to the reader from history (or other fiction) without that painful, unpleasant, self-congratulatory, self-conscious coyness of someone Making a Big Announcement. Saylor treats all his characters as equals, as people, even when their social or potilical standing sets some above others. I think that's why it seems perfectly natural for Gordianus to talk to Cicero, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Cato the Younger without it being unconvincing or stilted.
In summary, the writing is good, the plot is excellent (although I didn't guess one of the major plot twists, I was amused that one or two things that had bothered me, little inconsistencies in the different witnesses' narratives, ended up being significant), the characters are appealing: overall a book I would highly recommend if you enjoy mysteries or are interested in the history of Republican Rome.
