The Graveyard of the Hesperides

May 9, 2016
Davis’s fourth Flavia Albia novel (after 2015’s Deadly Election), a straightforward whodunit set in Rome in 89 C.E., lacks the political backdrop of earlier installments in the series. The arresting opening sentence, “Everyone knew a dead barmaid was buried in the courtyard,” refers to an eating house called the Garden of the Hesperides. Flavia’s fiancé, Manlius Faustus, has just bought a renovation business, and his first job, a holdover from the business’s incompetent previous owner, is to redo the courtyard of the Garden of the Hesperides. When Manlius’s workers uncover some bones, Flavia, among others, wonders whether they are the remains of Rufia, the missing barmaid. Flavia, an informer (the ancient Roman equivalent of a PI) who believes in justice above all else, sets out to identify the remains and solve a very cold case—which becomes more complex after she finds evidence of a previously unsuspected crime. The leads are entertaining, but the resolution isn’t one of Davis’s best.

May 15, 2016
An ancient Roman sleuth balances a tricky murder investigation with the new challenges of her approaching nuptials. Days before her wedding to virile Tiberius Manlius Faustus, Flavia Albia brings a picnic lunch to her bridegroom at his popular restaurant, The Garden of Hesperides, currently closed for renovations. Their hearty romantic meal is interrupted when builders discover a cache of human bones. Her job as an informer (the ancient term for a private investigator) makes Albia feel duty-bound to investigate, however halfheartedly. Faustus immediately identifies the remains as those of Rufia, a Hesperides barmaid for the restaurant's previous owner whose disappearance has prompted much gossip. The locals all know about Rufia but claim she had no enemies or even a boyfriend. The discovery of more body parts amps up the need for a real investigation as well as Albia's anxiety. Evidence of dismemberment confirms foul play. Albia convinces her fiance to set his workmen the task of digging up the remains, but he, like she, is more focused on their impending marital bliss. When several more bodies are unearthed, Albia looks for similarities among the victims. All of them but Rufia are men whose heads don't happen to have been removed. Is it possible that this female corpse doesn't belong to the barmaid at all? Albia races against the clock to catch the killer before her wedding day. Davis' fourth case for her heroine (Deadly Election, 2015, etc.) is long on drollery, unpacking its tricky murder puzzle piecemeal.

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Starred review from June 1, 2016
The Hesperides were evening nymphs, the daughters of Nyx (Night). Davis provides a sympathetic look at first-century Rome's ladies of the evening in this thoroughly satisfying fourth outing (after Deadly Election, 2015) for Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco. Following in Falco's footsteps, Flavia has established herself as a professional informer (detective, in modern terms) and can't help but get involved when her husband-to-be uncovers human remains during the renovation of a rundown bar called the Garden of the Hesperides. It has been rumored for years that the owner once killed a barmaid and buried her in the courtyard. Flavia is grateful for the diversion because she is dreading the impending ostentatious wedding that her family has planned for her. The story unfolds at an astonishing pace, over the course of just eight days. There is plenty of drama and danger, which spill right over into the nuptial celebrations, but there is also a hearty helping of Davis' well-placed humor. She continues to take us out onto the streets and into the alleyways of a Rome so unlike the pristine marble metropolis of romantic imagining. We follow Flavia, a strong yet vulnerable female protagonist, into a victimarium and the aptly named Mucky Mule Mews. Juno! Recommended for all fans of humorous mysteries and crime set in antiquity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)