REVIEWS FROM DEVORAH STONE
in CANADA
MARCH - APRIL REVIEWS
SEVEN FOR A SECRET
MARY REED & ERIC MAYER
Poisoned Pen Press April, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59058-489-7
Constantinople, at its height, was the center of Christian civilization but also tolerated underlying ancient Roman, Greek, and Egyptian paganism, and the lingering practice of Mythra. It's a place rife with tension under the iron-fisted but often fickle rule of Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora.
Chamberlain John has taken up the habit of talking to a girl in a mosaic. He has strange but often satisfactory conversations with her. One day he meets a grown woman who claims to be that girl. The next time he sees her, she's dead.
Can the mystery of the death of a woman who was once from a good family but had fallen to the status of an actress and prostitute be of consequence in a city pulled by so many forces? John is driven to find her murderer, regardless of the threat to himself.
The walk through Constantinople, a city poised between a Roman Asian city and an emerging feudal society, was fascinating. There were both ancient Roman and emerging Christian sensibilities at every turn. A society was just finding its way, adjusting to a new philosophy but not ready to let go of the old. It was also a city bursting at the seams with people from everywhere, all walks of life and circumstances, and those circumstances could, and did, change on the whim of the Emperor.
John takes the reader through this world. Through his eyes the reader meets the tradesmen: a mosaic artist, a sausage maker, a pious cleaning lady, an actress, a Madam, prostitutes, a sun dial maker, religious visionaries, and beggars. The very poor live beside the rich and powerful. Everyone has a secret; many lived better or worse lives, as it is a society in flux. The novel shows us what a thin line there is between the pragmatic and the spiritual. John is a secret adherent of Mythra, the mysterious ancient soldier's society, in this emerging Christian world. He himself straddles society with unease despite his position in it. Because of his strange and mystical attachment to a figment in a mosaic he wants justice. Solving this mystery sheds light on a conspiracy against the rulers of the Empire itself.
Throughout this novel, I felt as though I was there. By the end I knew the place. The city itself is a character and as much a suspect as everyone else. I understood the constant struggle to survive but also the search for meaning and a spiritual base so many of these characters, and indeed the city itself, longed for. The ending had a twist that was both believable and surprising -- just like Constantinople.
- Devorah Stone
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BURIED TOO DEEP
JANE FINNIS
Poisoned Pen Press June, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59058-399-9
The natives are restless and the settlers are scared because an outlaw band is roaming the land making the frontier unsafe for everyone. No, this isn't the Western United States in the eighteen hundreds, its Britannia 98 BC under Roman rule. The outlaws are Gauls.
A native loyal to the Roman Empire tells Aurelia Marcella, a Roman Innkeeper living in Britannia, about the scourge to his family just before he dies of a sword wound. Aurelia, with Lucius, her twin brother and a Roman official, investigate. Along the coast they encounter a mysterious treasure, a high-class concubine, a barbarian ruler, star crossed lovers, and a mysterious man claiming to be their half brother.
At the start, I thought that an intriguing Greek doctor would be a pivotal character but, unfortunately, he wasn't. I also thought it would have some probing statement about our times, but it didn't. Instead, the ever-cheery spunky Aurelia loves just about everyone as she roams around the countryside looking for evil doers. It's such a cheery place where the natives seem to be getting along just swimmingly with all the Romans except for a few newcomers. If Jane Finnis had been alive at that time, she would be the Roman Empire's cheerleader.
Reading the novel, I didn't feel that anyone was in real danger. There is one disgruntled Brit but Aurelia puts him right after a few pages. Sometimes Finnis's writing gets darker, as when Aurelia stays overnight in a fortress during a thunderstorm, but it never lasts. The cheeriness comes back. It is at least in the details as far as I can tell, true to the times. For anyone interested in the time and place there are some interesting historical points but I found the overall lack of tension and conflict annoying. Everyone got along too well to be believed.
For a more believable and darker book about Roman Britain, I would recommend Lindsay Davis' THE JUPITER MYTH.
- Devorah Stone