Kirkus Reviews QR Code
HIDING FROM THE PAST by Albert A. Bell Jr.

HIDING FROM THE PAST

by Albert A. Bell Jr.

Pub Date: April 7th, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-56474-610-8
Publisher: Perseverance Press

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.