John Maddox Roberts: Nobody Loves a Centurion (USA 2003)

From the Publisher:
LIKE SO MANY YOUNG MEN IN LATER GENERATIONS, Roman playboy/detective Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger is faced with the necessity of serving in his country's armed forces. Since a dangerous enemy has become powerful in the politics of Rome, Decius is just as well out of the city for a while. He sets out to join Caesar in Gaul (where the general has come and seen, but has as yet not been able to conquer). The occupying Roman army is at a standstill. When Decius shows up in full parade regalia (much to the amusement of the more informally uniformed veterans) and accompanied only by his young personal slave, Caesar sets him to the task of discovering who murdered one of his centurions, a cruel and unfair officer feared and hated by every one of the one hundred soldiers under him. A further prod to Decius is that the main suspect is a youth whose father is a close friend of the Metellus family. With Caesar's decree that another killer be found in a matter of hours or the young man dies, Decius has his work cut out for him.

John Maddox Roberts's series, set in the first century A.D., vividly brings to readers a strong sense of the everyday life of the ancient Romans in the context of our own.

John Maddox Roberts: Nobody Loves a Centurion. SPQR VI. Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin's Minotaur, ISBN: 0312320191 (October, 2003), 276 p., $13.95.

John Maddox Roberts: Nobody Loves a Centurion (USA 2001)

From the Publisher:
"NATURALLY, THE LAST PLACE ANY SANE MAN WOULD WANT TO BE ON A BATTLE-FIELD IS CONSIDERED A POST OF HONOR." -- DECIUS CAECILIUS METELLUS THE YOUNGER

Julius Caesar, as we know, arrived in Gaul (now France) and announced, "I came, I saw, I conquered," but when Decius Metellus arrives from Rome, not seeking military glory but rather avoiding an enemy currently in power, he finds that although the general came and saw, so far, at least, he has far from conquered. The campaign seems at a standstill.

Decius's arrival disappoints the gre great Caesar as well. He has been waiting for promised reinforcements from Rome to restart his invasion. Instead, he is presented with one young man ridiculously decked out in military parade finery and short on military skills, accompanied not by eager troops but by one callow and reluctant slave, the feckless Hermes.

It soon develops, however, that Decius's arrival was fortuitous. When Vinius, the army's cruelest centurion (so-called because he commands a hundred soldiers), is found murdered, Caesar remembers that his new recruit has successfully come up with the culprit in a number of recent crimes. Murder is bad for morale, particularly since it seems quite clear that the murderer is one of Caesar's men. Caesar orders Decius to find the killer -- and quickly.

Although evidence points to the son of one of Decius's clients -- a youth who was the particular target of the centurion's brutality -- Decius racks his brain to find a way to save him from the sentence of death. The investigation leads Decius to two German slaves of the dead man -- a dwarfish old man and a beautiful woman. They are puzzling: The man is arrogant, the woman haughty -- very unlike slaves. There are unanswered, questions. It soon becomes clear to Decius that only by finding and punishing the real murderer will it be possible to quiet the rising dissatisfaction with Caesar's unorthodox method of warfare and forestall a mutiny against the mighty Caesar's authority and aims.

JOHN MADDOX ROBERTS is the author of numerous works of science fiction and fantasy, in addition to his successful historical SPQR mystery series. The first two books in the series have recently been re-released in trade paperback. He lives in New Mexico with his wife.

John Maddox Roberts: Nobody Loves a Centurion. SPQR VI. Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin's Minotaur, ISBN: 031227257X (September, 2001), 275 p., $23.95.