Food for the Fishes (Marcus Corvinus Mysteries)

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.

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 . . .