Customer Comments

This is an amazing book. The historical, psychological, political and economical insights of Ancient Rome are breathtaking and the internal journey through the thoughts and resulting deeds of Claudius (a brilliant politician and scholar trapped inside a misshapen body, that was viewed as "hideous" in a culture that loved strength, virility and physical beauty) as he works behind the scenes to protect himself and Rome's citizenry left me speechless.

I loved this book and read it without pause until I was done. Grimes has an amazing ability to create various "English" settings that transport the reader to an upscale London wine bar where the barkeep is an absolute guru on vintage bottled fermented grapes, a slouchy country pub where there is always a cat sleeping underfoot and regulars that can sit for hours without saying a word, or Jury's own odd living quarters in which his "neighbors" drop in unannounced to causally paint their toes. Grimes characters are wonderful and eccentric. They may appear mad at times but there is always rhyme to their reason. Melrose Plant would make any woman swoon with his outlandish obsessions and his hatred of change from the traditional. Though he is an Earl and does not work he is always busy as Jury's right hand man and the tormentor of his aged and demanding Aunt who steals the silver. A must read. Always a great mystery story plot with dark humor to offset the glum of death.

It may sound cliche that this story focuses on a depressed and depressive private investigator who is very capable when it comes to finding missing strangers but is unable to find his way back to his missing family members who are in close proximity. This book is told in a rich and textured voice that places the reader in a noisy, deep creek that serves as a cold killing site for a young girl, a house so silent that it "screams" with the unheard voices of dead innocents, and other natural landscapes that are both brutal and beautiful. The characters are complex and vastly different from one another but victimhood is their common denominator. In many ways the dead or lost are more alive than the living since the living have been stunted by fear or otherwise retarded from moving forward and returning to happiness because the violence done to them left them incomplete human beings. A great, truly great read. It reminds us to be slow to judge the defects and vulnerabilities of others whose personal pain is unknowable to us.