Medicus by Ruth Downie

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Title: Medicus, A Novel of the Roman Empire
Author: Ruth Downie
Publication Year: 2006
Genre: Mystery
Count for Year: 15
Pages: 386

How I discovered

A friend of mine, John, actually was the one to discover this when at a bookstore. I believe the book might have been in the bargain bin. However, he thought it looked interesting because he had read a series set in ancient Rome by Stephen Saylor previously. Since he knew I also loved Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa series, he sent this to me along with the first four of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. While I have yet to get to them (although my wife did and has now read everything up until the most recent one), I did get to this.

The setup

Roman Army medic Gaius Petreius Ruso has come to Britannia to make a fresh start. Within days he finds himself landed with a female corpse that nobody else wants to deal with, and a local slave girl who won’t talk to him. He’s also fallen foul of the dreaded hospital administrator at Deva (modern-day Chester), and a senior centurion wants to strangle him. The last thing he wants to do is investigate the murders of local barmaids – and naturally, his handsome and spectacularly lazy colleague Valens is no help at all.

Things can be tough on the edge of the Empire – not only for a civilised man, but for the women he seems fated to gather around him.

– a description of the book from Downie’s website

I was more than ready for this book based on the description from my friend John and also because I had loved Saylor’s series set in a similar time. For the most part, I was not disappointed as Downie wove a story that while not as good as Saylor’s yet definitely has the potential to become as good, although she will be hard pressed to be better than Saylor’s series, as it continues.

Unlike Saylor’s protagonist, Gordianus, who is hired in the first novel Roman Blood to be an investigator for Cicero, Downie’s protagonist Gaius Petreius Ruso is not an investigator. As the description above describes him, Ruso is an Army medic recently stationed in Brittania. However, when prostitutes from a local bar began getting killed, and the second spear, the man who should by rights do the investigation doesn’t, Ruso, in good conscience, has no choice but to investigate the murders.

In a subplot, Ruso also has no choice but to rescue an injured slave girl, Tilla, from the hands of her abusive owner — a device similar to one employed by Saylor with a slave girl with whom Gordianus falls in love and eventually marries.

I’ll be honest that I’m hard pressed to pull one section of the book as a sample of Downie’s writing. Nothing exactly stood out, because it all flowed together fairly seamlessly.

However, in a telephone conversation the other night with my friend John, he reminded me of the humor that Downie uses throughout her book. He said for him this short interaction Ruso had with a landlady where he was going to put up Tilla:

“Do you have mice?”

She frowned. “The girl is on a special diet?”

“I don’t mean on the menu. I mean running around. Wild mice.”

This is just one sample of the subtle humor that is found throughout the book and makes the book work.

One last note, like Saylor in his series, Downie here adds an author’s note to place the book in its historical context and like Saylor’s author’s notes, it fleshes out the details just enough to put the icing on the cake, as it were.

Of course, I’m not to give you any of those details. That would spoil the icing when you get there.

My final analysis: 4 out of 5, not because I didn’t think it was as good as it could be, but I think it will get better in the next few that Downie writes. In her defense, though, this was her first novel.

My rating system:

5- Classic, must read
4- Worth owning a copy
3- Worth picking up at library
2- Worth skimming at the bookstore
1- Worth being a doorstop

Book 2 of the series, Terra Incognita, is now available in paperback from Bloomsbury Press. For more information, click here. Book 3 of the series, Persona Non Grata, will be available in the U.S next month in hardcover: information here.

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Tags: Books, mystery, book review, Ruth Downie, Medicus, ancient Rome