Mary Ray has had a passion for ancient history, in her own words, “from the age of six when I started at the deep end with the battle of Marathon, and I have never so far been able to write anything with a modern setting.”  She writes that since that early time she has never felt any strangeness or distance about what she had learned of the people of Greece and Rome and of earlier civilizations. Lindsey Davis put an end to her popular Falco series after twenty books. Recommended for ages 14 and up, according to the cover. Too dark for me. To see what your friends thought of this book. Ceres, Venus, and Fortuna are the only other deities named. Rent and save from the world's largest eBookstore. (Literally, by the way, I had to get up and attack a plate of Kalamata olives and French bread just to satisfy my visceral needs as well as intellectual ones. Flavia Albia is female Informer (private investigator) in ancient Rome during the reign of Emperor Domitian. A literary medium that dates, in effect, from the mid-18th century inevitably risks anachronism when portraying periods remote from it. As a writer, I can see that after 20 book the series might be wearing a bit thin for her, but as a reader I wanted MORE! I love to supplement our history with historical fiction. Looking for something to watch? I thought the emergence of Christianity would be a bigger aspect of the story, but I'm thankful that it isn't blown out of proportion as some Christian writers tend to do. Refresh and try again. They're sharp, funny, and well-researched. Four or four hundred, it is the law, or the household could infect the whole city. Kind of sad. I wasn't all into the book at first in the beginning but some part drag me in. Its inspiration derives from the historian Dio Cassius, who reported how, in the reign of Domitian, "some persons made a business of smearing needles with poison and then pricking with them whomsoever they would". As Henning Mankell did in Before the Frost, Davis has retired her detective to the background, and introduced his daughter as the main protagonist. I also guessed who was the killer almost from the beginning and I'm usually not good at guessing. The first few Falco novels were entertaining because the the author was scrupulous about the history. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Flavia, who lives alone in Falco's old apartment building in Fountain Court, visits them a few times in the book, but author. A bit too "British" per the narrator for my tastes and additionally that not much in the clue trail was happening in the first two discs. Ellie practically begged me not to have her read this. The children’s book market dried up in England, and I am now writing adult science fiction, so far unpublished.” So, though she has never written a story with a modern setting, Mary Ray is not one, after all, to look only to the past. Therefore I jumped into this series not knowing what to expect. When the death of her latest unsavory client leads Albia to suspect that a serial killer is on the loose, she soon finds herself in the middle of the intrigue. Complete summary of Thornton Wilder's The Ides of March. It gets better and it is with your time to read it especially if you love to read. I do that sometimes. eNotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of The Ides of March. "[4] Tom Holland reviewed the book for The Guardian[5] and ended:.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}. Yet it's classified as children's historical fiction. I give it 3 because, for me, it was hard to follow the large cast of characters. At any rate, this book definitely whetted my curiosity for the rest of the series and perhaps even the longer series that this one sprang from, but which will take considerable reading over the course of the next few months, if I choose to tackle it. The Ides of April… “Sometimes you run away by yourself purely so someone who cares will come to find you. Without an author's note to the historical detail, I don't know what sources Ms. Ray used, which is unfortunate. Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA, What to Watch if You Miss the "Game of Thrones" Cast. The colorful way she captures the flavor of ancient Rome had me eating olives and crusty loaves of bread along with the main character as she solved the problem of mysterious deaths that no one was reporting. Even a truly superlative author can disappoint sometimes, though it's taken Lindsey Davis decades to do so. It didn't. We read this book for school. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published A murder took place and Hylas was force to flee from home where he was a slave. Lindsey Davis, historical novelist, was born in Birmingham, England in 1949. Flavia Albia uses Falco's old apartment in Fountain Court as her office, and lives elsewhere in the same building. His family were taken captive accused of the murder and him and his friends go on a mission to find the real murderer to get his family back. Maybe even lower. In this book there is a smart, young, witty slave named Hylas who is able to escape from his master’s house after an unknown man murders his master.