The Venus Throw (1995)

One of the better of the Gordianus series. Here our noble Finder is caught in a complex web of misunderstandings and half-truths, which he consistently ploughs through, until he finally uncovers the truth—in his own house hold!

In this story the great figures of the late Republic play only a peripheral role, we hear a few names, but they are mostly off stage. It is the second level "great Romans" we see this time, plotting and scheming for power and status.

The story concerns 100 Alexandrian scholars and prominent folk who come to Rome in order to lobby the senate to confirm Queen Berenice as Queen of Egypt, rather than King Ptolemy, who is currently in Rome pushing his own case. As soon as they arrive in Italy the visitors are murdered and intimidated into returning to their home. Only one reaches Rome, by "coincidence" one of these is Dio the philosopher, Gordianus' former tutor in Alexandria. The two meet, talk, but the Finder cannot help his teacher. The next evening Dio dies. Prompted by the death Gordianus searches for the killer, and in doing so uncovering unpleasant aspects of his teacher's life.

A good story, no idea of who the "bad guy" was until he very end. ( )

This episode of the Roma sub Rosa series has Gordianus investigating the murder of an Egyptian envoy, Dio, in the home of a neighbor, Clodia. He originally met Dio in Alexandria when he was young and learned from this philosopher. When Clodia offers him the job of discovering his murderer, Gordianus jumps at the chance to avenge Dio. Dio was found in his room with stab wounds in a tight pattern in his chest, no defensive wounds, and a surprised look on his face. However, the surprising lack of blood has Gordianus puzzled. Clodia accuses her ex-lover and protege of Cicero, Marcus Caelius of the murder and Gordianus has days to discover the truth or he will be called as a witness for the prosecution.

In this book we meet the Roman poet, Catullus, another ex-lover of the cougar Clodia, and her brother, Publius Clodius, a notorious rabble-rouser. There are too many twists and turns in this story which ends with the trial, and another brilliant defense by Cicero.

Saylor takes real historic events and fleshes them out with his characters to bring them to life. ( )

VENUS THROW by Steven Saylor is just as fun (and, at times, educational) as all the other books in the Roma Series. Unfortunately, reading the digital version on my nook was frustrating and even difficult. "Why?" you ask. Well, I'll tell you. I've never seen so many typos in one document in my life...and I used to be a writing tutor! The words are not misspelled; they are simply the wrong words. Obviously, they ran a spell check program and let it automatically fix problems without making sure it was choosing the correct words. I don't know what happened with the punctuation. Lest you think I'm exaggerating: At page 96, I started highlighting typos and bookmarking the pages. By page 300, I had over 65 pages marked, and many had more than one typo! Saylor's website has a "Great Typo Hunt" for similar problems with the hard copy of EMPIRE. Apparently, the folks at St. Martin's have taken sloppy editing to new extremes.

6 March 2001
The Venus Throw
Steven Saylor

I am developing a passion for these stories of ancient Rome, with Gordianus the finder, in this book an older man, now married to his former slave, and with two adopted sons from previous adventure. This one concerns the attempts of the Romans to take over the Egypt of the Ptolemies, and the murder of an ambassador to Rome from Egypt. It turns out it was done by Gordianus' daughter for very private reasons of his wife, but the suspects are all well known to the history of the time. Clodia and Clodius of the ancient Clodii family are the main protagonists, and there is another trial by Cicero, referring again to his orations. ( )

This is a great series if you like history and detective fiction! ( )