Flavia Albia solves not one, but two mysteries in The Grove of the Caesars (#924), the latest outing of Lindsey Davis's consistently entertaining mystery series set in the Rome of Domitian, not an exactly comfortable period of time for the average Roman.
Although Flavia's husband is away on family business, he has casually warned her not to bother to go out to the Grove of the Caesars, a public park, to supervise his work gang dismantling an old grotto site. That, of course, guarantees that Flavia will be there as soon as she can manage it. When she does arrive, the work crew has just unearthed a cache of buried scrolls. Can they be valuable? It's certainly worth tracking down...
In the nearby Gardens, a huge birthday party is interrupted when the wife of the birthday boy goes missing, only to turn up raped and murdered in the Grove. As Flavia investigates the disappearance of two dancing boys, a very recent gift from the Emperor, she begins to suspect that they may have been witnesses to the murder. And, as it turns out, it's not the first by a long shot.
Flavia Albia carries on the amusing legacy of her adoptive parents, Marco Didius Falco and Helena Justina in this spinoff series. If you haven't been lucky enough to discover these wonderful series yet for yourself, start with the original Marco Didius Falco series to find out just how Flavia Albia became part of this auctioneer/investigator family.
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