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Spqr IV: the Temple of the Muses (SPQR) | 
 enlarge | Author: John Maddox Roberts
Publisher: Saint Martin's Press Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: £8.35
Buy New: £4.87
You Save: £3.48 (42%)
New (12) Used (6) from £4.87
Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 96507
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0312246986
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780312246983
ASIN: 0312246986
Publication Date: October 31, 1999
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW - ***Delivery usually * 4 - 5 * working days - From Aphrohead of SOUTHPORT, Lancs, UK *** . Priority Airmail used Worldwide on International orders. Thanks from all at Aphrohead.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Fourth in the Series February 26, 2007
J. Chippindale (England)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
John Maddox Roberts is the pseudonym of Mark Ramsay, author of numerous works of science fiction and fantasy, in addition to his successful historical SPQR mystery series. He lives in New Mexico with his wife.
Once again our hero, Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger is drawn into a web of deceit and intrigue, but this time outside the confines of his beloved Rome. Decius is given the chance to join a delegation that are on a diplomatic mission to Alexandria and he sees it as an ideal opportunity to escape the attention of his growing number of enemies in Rome.
Decius is just beginning to enjoy his visit to Egypt, with all of its exotic pleasures, when a suspicious death of a philosopher occurs, coinciding with the ravings of a charismatic cult leader. Intrigued by the death, Decius is given permission by the Pharaoh to investigate the crime, but what he eventually discovers shocks even Decius. Our hero has taken many women to his bed, but when the body of a famous courtesan mysteriously turns up in his bed, Decius is less than amused and finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy much more far reaching than he could ever have imagined.
 A thrilling episode in Rome's Sleuthing Young Senator May 11, 2001
33 out of 34 found this review helpful
After solving the mystery of the Sacrilege in Ceasar's House and with the political implications of his actions, trying to reveal the plot to subvert the senile Roman Republic by the most powerful persons of the era, Decius Caecilius Metellus junior leaves the premises of the Capital, in a "rehabilitating" embassy to the court of Rome's protegee king Ptolaemaeus of Egypt,as companion to his Senior relative Cointus Caecilius Metellus "the Cretan". A seemingly easy mission to allow him to be forgotten and safe by his dedicated and annoyed ennemies, brings the young sleuthing senator to the port of The Ptolaemean Alexandreia. The majestic description of one of the most flamboyant and grand cities of that era comes alive in front of the reader's eyes, under the quill skills and excellent historic knowledge of John Maddox Roberts. The Great Library and the Museum with the great philosophers and scientists of the era is the theatre of his first social visit, due to the interest of his betrothed Julia,niece of Ceasar, in a surprise trip to Alexandreia, and her interest of the scientific research and theory. But the young senator's fate brings him again to the entangled paths of a murderous conspiracy. Mathematician Iphicrates from Chios, one of the last pupils of Archimedes is found murdered in the Museum during a symposium. Again the natural eagerness of Metellus brings him to the dangerous tracks of the conspirators. What is the involment of 10 year old Cleopatra's older sister Verenice in it? What brings in the plot the Parthian Ambassador and an Athenean Haetera? Lots of sub plots fitting like jigsaw puzzles and the help of Julia and the Greek doctor Asclepiades mortuary skills will be enough for the Sleuthing Senator to solve the mystery of the murder and beneath it? Once more John Maddox Roberts gives us an exceptional description of an historic era even if some people may have slight objections about the "subjective" views he presents in Metellus's comments. Combined with a mystery plot and a way of writing that doesn't allow the reader to get outtracked by the vast amounts of historical data he presents and that added to the normal "predictability" of a series of mystery solving novels with a central hero... just as Roberts has proved in his previous books he can easily overcome this and provide us with the thrill of the unexpected. At the end of the book the reader will find himself delighted by a very compact and well written thriller and a lot of historical knowledge he couldn't have absorbed so easily from a school book. Just read enjoy and grab the next in the series.!!!
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