This is the second book in the series Lindsey Davis has created featuring Flavia Albia, the adopted daughter of her earlier hero, Falco. The first book firmly established Albia in her own right; smart, determined, and fiercely independent.
Hardly has she recovered from the professional and personal issues surrounding her last case, when she is called in to investigate two deaths. A newly married couple have been found dead in their bed. Immediately afterwards, most of their household slaves claim sanctuary in a local temple. The local magistrate – who Albia encountered in the first book – asks her to look into what happened.
This makes for an interesting story. The laws around slaves who may have been involved in the death of their master or mistress were straightforward; and brutal. Designed for practical reasons – from the owners’ point of view – to prevent such an event happening. But it meant that slaves had no way of defending themselves; evidence from a slave was only valid if it had been obtained under torture.
Albia therefore has to work on two levels. Try to unravel the lives of the victims, their friends and their free household members. Then try to work out what the slaves fear and why they didn’t defend their master and mistress during the attack that killed them.
There are a lot of characters involved in this story. The victims have a number of friends and relations who might have benefitted from their deaths. And the slaves are a very mixed bunch; the newlyweds were in the process of merging their households, and everyone knew that meant some of the slaves would be surplus to requirements. The final element in the mix is the local crime family, who may – or may not – have been involved.
To make life easy for herself, Albia moves temporarily into the house of the victims, along with Dromo, a slave of the magistrate, who is there for her protection. He is ever present through the rest of the story; useless, but dependable in his own way. He’s the source of quite a bit of humour. Albia’s growing relationship with the magistrate himself is also handled well, leaving you wondering where it might go.
The story actually covers quite a lot of ground around Roman law; though never gets bogged down. Marriage contracts, guardianship, divorce, the status of slaves and freedmen. All interesting, and relevant to the story, but handled lightly. I learnt quite a lot without any pain!
As always, with Lindsey Davis, the story rattles along at pace. New faces appear, but always with just enough detail to allow you to remember them with ease. She has a singular knack of handling a large cast list with aplomb, and avoiding any confusion.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story from beginning to end. Albia is an interesting character; in some ways, she has more about her than her more famous father. Lindsey Davis seems to have been re-invigorated by writing stories from a different perspective. I wondered if taking a character from the Falco books to create a new lead would work, but after the first two books, I would have to say that it is working beautifully.
This is a review of the Hodder & Stoughton 2014 Kindle edition.
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