Tangled Web UK Review April 2007
In at the Death by
David Wishart
pbk out September 07
(Hodder)
at £7.99
This must be about the fourteenth of David Wishart's whimsical, entertaining and
erudite 'Marcus Corvinus' Roman mysteries, his prime character being an amateur
private eye in Imperial Rome. Marcus is built on the same lines as Lord Peter
Wimsey, a well-off patrician with a private income.
I find the series very unusual in several respects, as the historical content is
delightfully at odds with his style of writing. This particular book is the tale of a
highly-complex political plot, which I can't even begin to summarise. The saga begins
with Corvinus being asked by a family to investigate the apparent suicide of a young
man, who fell from the sixth floor of a tenement on the Aventine.
To follow the convoluted political intrigues of David Wishart's plots really requires a
First Class Honours Degree in Roman History and, in this book, I freely admit that I
was floundering before halfway. There is a large dramatis personae, but thankfully,
he gives an indispensible list of characters at the outset, helpfully distinguishing real
people from those he invented. Even so, one has to keep shooting back to it every few
pages, muttering 'Who the hell is Lascivious Sextus?' Perhaps one criticism of these
unique books is that they have too many people in them, especially having long Latin
names that are harder to stack in the memory, compared to Bill Bloggs and John
Smith.
But to me, the remarkable aspect of Wishart's books is the racy, almost provocative
use of 21st century slang to recount the events of 1st century Rome. This immediately
raises the argument in which historical novelists delight, as to what style should be
used to describe the past?
To be absolutely authentic, we should use Latin or early Middle English or whatever
was spoken at the time. This is daft – and would not amuse the publishers – so
modern English is required, hopefully free of 'gadzooks' and 'prithee' except where
temporally relevant. David Wishart takes this to extremes - and maybe he is right. His
hero calls everyone 'pal' and giving a single example will illustrate the general tenor
of his dialogue…. "Tiberius will find out it was murder and you and your pals will be
up shit creek without a paddle before you could whistle!"'
Maybe Imperial Romans did have such sayings, though I can't recall those actual
sentiments in the well-known Pompeii graffiti. I'm sure his frequent use of the 'f-
word' had exact parallels in the Eternal City, but I have to say that it jars a bit on me,
as I want to read historical novels that sound at least a little bit archaic, rather than
what could be a 2007 thriller based in Liverpool. Still, he has a huge following and if
you bone up on your Tacitus and your Livy and buy a Dictionary of Slang, you can
enjoy this fascinating series to the full.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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