Book Six in the series of historical mysteries featuring Flavia Albia, who has taken over her father’s business as an informer (private detective) in First Century CE Rome. Albia reluctantly agrees to look into the sudden demise of a privileged young girl after a night out with the brat pack of her so-called friends.
Clodia's death has devastated her family. Her parents are divorcing, her grandmothers are making accusations against each other. Yet her friends are indifferent, even callous. Meanwhile, there are rumors among the family's acquaintances and neighbors that the willful Clodia, pining for a young man who did not return her regard, had obtained a love potion from a local herbalist and witch, and that drinking this potion had caused her death.
But Albia reasons that a love potion --- if there is one --- would have been intended for the young man, not for Clodia's own consumption. She becomes even more dubious when she learns that the object of Clodia's desire was in fact the much indulged grandson of the witch, Pandora --- and the heir to the boss of one of Rome's most powerful criminal gangs. Her investigation reveals the Rome of CE 89 to be a city sinking in a toxic stew of public corruption, private vice and gang violence, the poor desperate to survive, the privileged reeking with entitlement.
The clear-eyed and skeptical Albia is equal to the task of sifting the sorry truth from this mass of human dross --- though sadly, not without other deaths along the say.
Another entertaining adventure embedded in a well-researched and accurate portrait of First Century Rome in the reign of Domitian. I have been a fan of Davis since my first encounter with Albia's father Falco in The Silver Pigs (1989).
Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.
Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.
Click HERE to read the review from the Bookbag (UK).
Click HERE to read the review from the Crime Reader (UK).
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