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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Decius does it again...with some help from his clients, December 14, 2007
Overall: this is another fine book in the SPQR series by John Maddox Roberts. It is a quick read with some interesting twists in it. A nice change of pass from the other books is that Decius needs to rely on his clients to do some of the investigating.
The SPQR format with Decius constantly moving up in office is a great idea but it is clearly coming the end of the series. The power of higher office also is a limit on the snooping that Decius has been so enjoyable to read. This book suffers a bit as the author has not quite figured out how to make the transition cleanly.
Decius and Julia are a formidible force for law and order in ancient Rome. Julia plays a fairly large part in this story; it is well managed and a great use of her logic and social skills. Decius does a great job of being a traditional Roman.
The story revolves around the transition within Rome away from the old families toward the rise of business / wealth in determining power.
Characters: 3 stars (not as much development as in prior books)
Action: 2 stars (not much action but many murders "off-camera" )
Complexity: 4 stars (nice bit of misdirection and red herrings)
Writing style: 3.5 stars (clear, concise and effective)
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Overall: 4 stars
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very strong addition to the series, December 28, 2007
This is a strong addition to the series and also works well as a standalone novel. Roberts both captures amusingly the atmosphere of the late Roman Republic and provides a tightly written murder mystery.
Our hero and narrator, Decius Caecilius Metellus the younger, has now advanced to a senior magistracy as Praetor Peregrinus in charge of court cases involving foreigners in Italy. With his wife and entourage he is stoically enduring the extravagant delights of the resort town of Baiae. As always, Decius portrays himself as a would-be playboy, reluctantly diverted by civic duty. His relaxed assumption of upper class superiority amidst an endlessly indulgent social swirl sometimes remind me of Bertie Wooster. But behind the facade, Decius is both intelligent and remorselessly diligent. Roberts skillfully namedrops through late Republican society, with Caesars and Antonii and Cicero himself dropping by.
Beside the resort atmosphere, Baiae also provides a complex murder mystery for Decius to solve, with many interlocking roles, hints, and misdirections. In some other novels of the series, the atmosphere and politics are interesting, but the murder mystery itself is weak and unconvincing. "Under Vesuvius" fixes that problem. The plot is complex, but the pieces ultimately fit together well, with a surprising and satisfying conclusion.
Although this is the 11th member of the series, it is also a fine place to begin. It is one of the strongest of the recent volumes and requires no prior knowledge of the other novels. A very enjoyable five stars.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This was an annoying book to read, November 4, 2008
Like the other reviewers, I am a fan of this series (as well as Steven Saylor's "Gordianus the Finder" books), and looked forward to reading this one very much. However, because of repeated or important errors by the author and the editors, I found myself becoming more annoyed the more I read.
First, the small stuff. When Decius goes to the townhouse of Jocasta, he "entered the courtyard". Roman townhouses did not have courtyards, per se. The first room entered was always the atrium. Only by going through the entire house could you access the garden, which was called a peristyle. The author also several times seems to confuse the atrium with the impluvium, which was a rectangular pool in the atrium, usually about 30 centimetres deep, for catching rainwater that fell through a hole in the roof called the compluvium. Here's an example, the first sentence of Chapter 8: "It didn't look like much of a weapon, lying on the table in the impluvium." I repeat, the impluvium was a pool for catching rainwater - no furniture was put in it.
Roberts also makes repeated references to "Coan" cloth as well as to silk. He makes it clear that he regards them as two different fabrics. In fact, Coan cloth, famous for its fineness and transparency, was itself probably silk.
But the biggest problem with this book is that the main characters repeatedly discuss volcanoes in general, and Mount Vesuvius as a volcano in particular. They seem very knowledgable about them in these discussions, and the main character makes more than one reference to volcanic eruptions. The fact is, however, that the Romans knew next to nothing about volcanoes. They had no word for "volcano" in their language. They had no direct experience with volcanic eruptions, which is why the Pompeiians were not particularly frightened at the beginning when Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. Had the Pompeiians known about volcanic eruptions, they could have saved themselves by fleeing right away, but many of them looked at the erupting Vesuvius and said "Wow, never saw that before. Oh, well, it's just smoke. Let's go have lunch."
Those are my quibbles. I'm a history teacher and see little excuse for these sorts of errors, so take that into account when reading this review. The story is a good one, the characters are well developed, and the conclusion is way cool. But Roberts' editor should have caught the errors about the Roman houses and fabrics, and Roberts himself should have known about the Roman relationship to volcanoes.
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