THE DEADLIEST THIEF

An alchemist and first-century amateur sleuth returns and must rescue a kidnapped friend in the fifth installment in Trop’s (The Deadliest Fever, 2018, etc.) historical mystery series.

It is Feb. 26, 61 C.E., and Miriam bat Isaac bolts from her chair to answer the banging on the door of her town house in Roman-occupied Alexandria, Egypt. She sees her closest friend, Phoebe, badly beaten; within moments she crumbles to the marble floor. She dies in Miriam’s arms, mumbling the word “document.” Distraught, Miriam discovers her friend brought a tube containing a sealed, rolled parchment. With shock she learns the dead woman isn’t Phoebe but rather Phoebe’s hitherto unknown twin sister, Leda, who was raised in Crete. Leda was married to a brute, Pytheus, one of three cohorts who last year stole the jewels from the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus on the island of Crete. According to Leda’s sworn statement, Pytheus intends to have Miriam killed. The sleuth’s momentary relief that it is not her best friend who has just expired vanishes when Phoebe’s husband, Bion, arrives and tells her that his wife is missing—kidnapped, it turns out. A few days later, Miriam encounters the dwarf Nathaniel ben Ruben, a friend from earlier in the series. It seems he, too, is being stalked by someone who sounds very much like Pytheus. Once again, Trop pulls readers into the sounds, smells, colors, and foods of ancient Alexandria. The multifaceted mystery is intriguing, with engaging characters, although they will seem less fully developed to new readers than to established fans. But the real strength of Trop’s atmospherically rich book lies in her ability to transport her audience to a distant time and place, seamlessly sprinkling her prose with period-appropriate Greek and Latin terminology and offering descriptive details that bespeak solid research: One scene has a table laden with “trays of stuffed olives, boiled eggs, and candied almonds; a platter of the cook’s specialty, thin slices of grilled lamb in a fragrant mint sauce; and a salad of dandelion greens, berries, and melon balls.”

Vibrant imagery and an entertaining plot ending with a most unexpected twist.