Roman Games: A Plinius Secundus Mystery
Plinius Secundus Mystery series
Sign in to keep track of books you’ve read and want to read.
Rome: September, 96 AD. When the body of Sextus Verpa, a notorious senatorial informer and libertine, is found stabbed to death in his bedroom, his slaves are suspected.Pliny is ordered by the emperor Domitian to investigate. However, the Ludi Romani, the Roman Games, have just begun and for the next fifteen days the law courts are in recess. If Pliny can't identify the murderer in that time, Verpa's entire slave household will be burned alive in the arena.
Read more
Pliny, a very respectable young senator and lawyer, teams up with Martial, a starving author of bawdy verses and denizen of the Roman demimonde. Pooling their respective talents, they unravel a plot that involves Jewish and Christian 'atheists,' exotic Egyptian cultists, and a missing horoscope that forecasts the emperor's death.
Their investigation leads them into the heart of the palace, where no one is safe from the paranoid emperor. As the deadline approaches, Pliny struggles with the painful dilemma of a good man who is forced to serve a brutal regime—a situation familiar in our own age as well.
The novel provides an intimate glimpse into the palaces and tenements, bedrooms and brothels of imperial Rome's most opulent and decadent age.
Liked Roman Games: A Plinius Secundus Mystery? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked Roman Games: A Plinius Secundus Mystery. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
-
The House of the Vestals Shares historical fiction, mystery, historical mystery -
Ovid Shares historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery -
Parthian Shot Shares historical fiction, mystery, ancient Rome -
All Roads Lead to Murder: A Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger Shares historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
