ARMS OF NEMESIS

Gordianus the Finder, Cicero's hired investigator who first appeared in Roman Blood (1991), gets his own case when Marcus Crassus, the richest man in the world, summons him to his opulent villa to look into the murder of Crassus' cousin and overseer Lucius Licinius. The stakes are high: If Gordianus and his mute adoptive son Eco can't disprove the guilt of the vanished slaves Zeno and Alexandros within three days, Crassus—who's warming up to crush the Spartacan slave revolt—will conclude Licinius' funeral games by executing all of his remaining 99 slaves. Wily Cicero's absence leaves Gordianus without much of a plot, but Saylor convincingly transposes the English country-house conventions to ancient Rome, and his scene-setting—especially at the Sibyl's shrine at Cumae—is effectively atmospheric.