There is a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter (she calls them "scrolls"), and she smuggles in quite a lot of lore about Roman life in general and the Latin language in particular. Aimed at 10-13 year olds, the series recounts the adventures of four children in 79AD, running around helping each other solve mysteries. So I immediately tried the first one, and it really was quite a treat. So I eagerly went there and found that she mentioned this excellent series by her old classmate in classics Caroline Lawrence, and highly recommended it. I noted in her bio that she has a fairly entertaining blog titled A Don's Life, to which she adds something about once a week. Hicks moves this thrilling story along at a satisfying pace and makes Flavia a headstrong but likable girl.So I've been reading a book on Roman triumphs by one of the best classicists writing today, Mary Beard, who holds the chair in classics at Cambridge. Nubia has a shy foreign accent, Jonathan's father sounds old and wise, Caudex the servant sounds old and sleepy, and the grieving father is mad with woe. A Web site, gives more info about the books and the author, an American who took degrees in England in classical art and archaeology as well as Hebrew and Jewish studies and currently resides in London.Īctress Kim Hicks, who has developed and performed in several critically acclaimed one-woman shows, gives this novel a professional full-voiced reading.
Later mysteries will be set in Pompeii, Sorento, Capri, and Rome. In the end they all plan to go off to Pompeii during August in A.D. This pleasant little story is politically correct and the characters are remarkably broadminded. More sophisticated listeners will find the story predictable and the dues too obvious. Young listeners will enjoy the characters, their adventures, and the themes of tolerance, friendship, and pluck. The prime suspect is a father whose little girl died weeks earlier of hydrophobia.
They try to discover who is killing and beheading the watchdogs on their street. The four children are set upon by feral dogs and chased by slave traders.
Flavia buys a young African slave girl named Nubia and takes in an orphaned beggar boy named Lupus, who cannot speak because someone has cut out his tongue. Flavia teams up with Jonathan, a Jewish boy from next door, whose father is a doctor. Flavia Gemina is a young girl who lives in Ostia with her father, a sea captain who is away from home for weeks at a time, allowing her and her young friends to get into danger and solve mysteries.
JĬaroline Lawrence's first book is also the first in a series called The Roman Mysteries.
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