Customer Reviews

Food for the Fishes (Marcus Corvinus Mysteries)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

When it comes to writing detective novels taking place in Ancient Rome, David Wishart is right up there with the best of them, Lindsey Davis and Steven Saylor to name but two.

The lead character Marcus Corvinus makes an amusing and likeable sleuth and with the help of his very able wife Perilla, not much gets past the pair of them when it comes to solving crimes in the ancient city.

When Licinius Murena the owner of a fish farm is found dead in one of his own eel tanks there are not many tears shed. Certainly not by Trebbio who has recently been booted out of his house by the landowner. Nor by the stunning young widow, half Murena's age. His daughter is not losing any sleep over the loss of her daddy either. The man's farm manager does not seem too distressed either. Does anyone like the murder victim.

It would seem that Corvinus has a list of suspects as long as his arm. Could this be one that even Marcus cannot solve . . .

Okay, I get it. Marcus Corvinus is a wise-cracking detective in ancient Rome. I could get past that. But I would appreciate the author being a bit more clever in his language by using wisecracks that might actually be relevant to the time period. Perhaps we're supposed to accept phrases like "...but all the same for Priscus to come home drunk was about as likely as a crayfish tap-dancing the length of the Baian seafront" and use our imagination as to what an equivalent remark would be for the time. The book is filled these types of anachronisms and I think it's just lame. The story is an amusing mystery, but not to my taste. I prefer Gordianus the Finder over the equivalent of Guy Noir dropped into ancient Rome.

David Wishart produces great Roman mysteries from a part of Europe Rome never reached - just north of Hadrian's Wall. Food for the Fishes is one of the most enjoyable of Wishart's series about Marcus Corvinus, a young patrician, set during the reign of Tiberius.

The interplay among Corvinus and the recurring supporting cast is one of the strengths of Wishart's series. Perilla (his wife), Vispania (his mother) and Priscus (his step-father) are all well developed characters and each contributes to this book, which is set in Vispania's seaside villa in Baiae, a favorite Roman resort for the wealthy.

The mystery itself is delightfully plotted and the book is well written. I look forward to each installment in the series, as I do to those of Steven Saylor, Lindsey Davis and Rosemary Rowe.

I will never buy another one of his mysteries. The story line is very good but I do not like to read his f***ing this and f***ing that. There's no need for language like that in a Roman story. I'm sure he could have found a much more Roman term to use than that. Also he writes in too much modern English sayings that you do not get the feel of a Roman story. It sounds like a modern story in Roman dress. I really like the Roman detectives but not his style of writing. He could learn a good lesson from Linday Davis and Rosemary Rowe. Far superior writers and with them you get the feeling of actually being in Rome not in an East End (London) gang. Will not purchase anything of his again. Money wasterd.