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A review by veronica87
The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis
3.0
Flavia Albia is female Informer (private investigator) in ancient Rome during the reign of Emperor Domitian. This means that she often has to take on cases that her male counterparts turn down. When the death of her latest unsavory client leads Albia to suspect that a serial killer is on the loose, she soon finds herself in the middle of the intrigue.
I ended up liking this book in spite of the fact that there were several reasons why I shouldn't. First of all, it's not written using the speech patterns of the time period and that sort of thing usually pulls me out of the story. The writing style seems to set up the story with a definite comedic bent though so the lack of authentic language ended up not being an issue for me after all. Secondly, the mystery itself was a bit weak. I picked out the murderer early on (and that almost never happens) and also immediately figured out another reveal long before Flavia Albia. Now, however, I wonder if the author intended for these things to be obvious to the reader, if perhaps the point of the story was to watch Albia stumble her way through the process to show that she is a normal person of regular intellect who is not immune to errors of judgement. I also had some trouble getting into the story at first. Not being familiar with this time period meant that I spent a lot of time googling various things.
What ultimately saved the book for me is Albia herself. Her acerbic wit may come as off-putting to some but I quite liked her, and her sardonic observations of and commentary about life and people often had me chuckling. She is the adopted, now grown daughter of the main character of the author's other, long running series. I haven't read that series but I didn't find that an impediment to settling into this one. I look forward to reading more books featuring Flavia Albia.
I ended up liking this book in spite of the fact that there were several reasons why I shouldn't. First of all, it's not written using the speech patterns of the time period and that sort of thing usually pulls me out of the story. The writing style seems to set up the story with a definite comedic bent though so the lack of authentic language ended up not being an issue for me after all. Secondly, the mystery itself was a bit weak. I picked out the murderer early on (and that almost never happens) and also immediately figured out another reveal long before Flavia Albia. Now, however, I wonder if the author intended for these things to be obvious to the reader, if perhaps the point of the story was to watch Albia stumble her way through the process to show that she is a normal person of regular intellect who is not immune to errors of judgement. I also had some trouble getting into the story at first. Not being familiar with this time period meant that I spent a lot of time googling various things.
What ultimately saved the book for me is Albia herself. Her acerbic wit may come as off-putting to some but I quite liked her, and her sardonic observations of and commentary about life and people often had me chuckling. She is the adopted, now grown daughter of the main character of the author's other, long running series. I haven't read that series but I didn't find that an impediment to settling into this one. I look forward to reading more books featuring Flavia Albia.