No Rest for the Dead

Let me see if I’ve got this straight now: Gordianus the Finder, the philosophical investigator who, through a series of novels written by Steven Saylor, plied his trade in 1st-century B.C. Rome, apparently died in the 2004 novel The Judgment of Caesar. Yet here he is, in Saylor’s new book, The Triumph of Caesar, back home on Rome’s Palatine Hill with his (also supposedly deceased) wife, Bethesda, and ready to probe the unfortunate murder of a friend who’d been looking into alleged attempts on Caesar’s life. Is that about the sum of it?

That and more, writes critic Caroline Cummins today in January Magazine, as she assesses Triumph, remarks on the difficulty of trying to make a mystery out of Caesar’s all-too-familiar demise, and looks forward to what may be next for author Saylor.

Her review can be found here.