"Et tu, Brute?" You undoubtedly recognize this quote from Julius Caesar spoken as Marcus Brutus is about to stab him on the Ides of March, 44 BCE. For Brutus, this was supposed to be a defining moment designed to place him in a position to claim supreme power in Rome for himself. He even had a coin struck by the Roman mint to commemorate the occasion. But destiny had other plans in mind for him.
The story of that coin, known as the Double Dagger Denarius, is the subject of James R. Clifford's novel Double Daggers (#363). After Brutus throws the coin away following his defeat at Phillippi, the author picks up the stories of three other men who briefly own the coin: one a Crusader, one a member of the Third Reich, and the third an ambitious Wall Street trader. None of these men's stories turns out well. It seems that in their haste to acquire such a rare and famous coin, they have overlooked the fact that it comes with a curse...
Double Daggers is a really fast and entertaining read, but it desperately needs some editing to weed out the grammatical errors and inappropriate use of the wrong homonyms. In other words, especially for a self-published book, you need a critical reader with a red pencil to polish up the finished product. Otherwise it's distracting to most readers. I'll admit that I'm one of those folks who would be just like Ted Moseby on How I Met Your Mother; I'd be out there correcting the billboards and graffiti, too, if I could! Still, if you're a historical fiction fan, you might find this book very appealing. It's worth taking a chance on for an intriguing story.
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