Hiding From the Past

February 17, 2020
In Bell’s disappointing eighth Ancient Roman historical (after 2018’s The Gods Help Those), real-life Roman official Pliny the Younger and his lover, Aurora, who’s also his slave, get stranded in Collis Niveosus, an Alpine village. The pair last visited the place in the company of Pliny’s uncle, Pliny the Elder, a decade earlier, in 77 CE, when they were both 15. Back then, they learned of the mysterious death of mill owner Junius, who was believed to have fallen and hit his head. Pliny the Elder suggested they investigate Junius’s death, but their efforts came to nothing. Now, with Aurora’s help, the younger Pliny uncovers evidence that someone slammed Junius’s head into a wall. The concept of the lead doing better with his inquiries 10 years later is a tough one to swallow, and Bell isn’t exactly adept at enhancing the plot with the time’s political developments. This won’t go down as one of Bell’s finer works.

February 15, 2020
Pliny the Younger gets a second crack at a case he first tackled a decade ago. The year is 87 C.E. Gaius Pliny the Younger (The Gods Help Those, 2018, etc.) and Aurora, his lover and slave, accompany the historian Tacitus, their friend, on a journey of several hundred miles to Gaul to visit his ill brother, Lucius. As Bell counterpoints first-person accounts by Gaius and Aurora in short cuts, freedman Albinus begs that his paramour, Sophronia, be allowed to come too. This proves an unwise decision when the woman brazenly mocks Aurora for "screwing [her] way to the top of the household." Tragedy strikes early in the journey when barbarians attack the company, killing Albinus. Rescue arrives in the person of Lucius Valerius Catulus, the handsome son of a local landowner who offers the party refuge. The place is odd; Syrus, one of Catulus' men, attributes the vacancy of a nearby villa to ghouls. It seems best to leave soon, taking an alternate route, a decision with which Tacitus concurs. The chosen route resonates disturbingly. Ten years ago, the teenage Aurora and Gaius were stuck in the Alpine village of Collis, where local mill owner Junius was killed in a fall that authorities ruled accidental. The aftermath has confirmed Gaius' suspicions of murder; the prosperous Roscius stepped in almost immediately to take over the mill. The story moves back and forth between the time of the crime and the present day, when Roscius is far from the only suspect, and Gaius, now an experienced investigator, closes in methodically on the killer. Bell's eighth Pliny mystery effectively folds history into a meticulous whodunit.

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