Review - Murder In The Forum

[wilderthan]

Murder in the Forum (by Rosemary Rowe) isn't great, nor is it terrible. Since it's the third book of a series, I might've been more interested if I'd read the other books, since I'd have known the characters and cared about them a bit more -- and I might've missed some subtleties of character-relationship. I don't think so, though. It was quite easy to get into without feeling that I was missing something, and it had a horrible tendency to overlabour a point -- like, "look! look at me! I'm a clever detective novel and I'm set in Roman Britain!". The historical accuracy wasn't too bad -- I didn't notice any glaring errors, though I only ever got up to A Level in Classical Studies.

The plot was also terribly elaborate. Possibly over-elaborate. I'm not that quick at keeping up with crime/detective novels -- I like them, but I'm not that great at working things out generally -- but this one felt particularly circuitous and I didn't have a moment of realisation where I figured it out ahead of the book telling me (and even I normally have that).