“…exactly the kind of thing older children want and young adults expect in a satisfying book.”

On a sudden whim, I bought the entire collection of the Roman Mysteries series by Caroline Lawrence just recently. They take me back to my days of teaching in Bangladesh when my children were young and both they and I – along with many other kids at the school – loved reading these books.

It has been a good twelve years or more since I read this first one and I could remember very little of the story, so it was a good time to start reading these again. Would I find it such fun a second time around?

The answer is a resounding yes! Lawrence writes with enviable skill balancing superlative historical knowledge with engaging characters and plots all the while creating a book that is appealing to young adults or older children. The Roman Mysteries may not be immensely deep but they hold such wealth of knowledge about life in Roman times that I found them most appealing.

In this first book, we have this world laid out along with the characters who are going to populate it. Flavia Gemina is the main protagonist and the detective of the series. She is aided by Jonathan, a Jewish boy whose family has converted to the new religion of Christianity, Nubia, a beautiful African slave girl she bought to save her and Lupus, a beggar boy who can’t speak.

This first mystery starts right at home when Jonathan’s dog is killed and beheaded. The one thing Lawrence does that challenges the genre is create real menace and horror while keeping within the confines of YA genre. There’s blood and death and nasty things happening in these books. Yet, it is never gratuitous and doesn’t dwell on such things. It is exactly the kind of thing older children want and young adults expect in a satisfying book.

Lawrence succeeds in her world-building and giving us characters we can care about – which is good considering we’re going to know them for another sixteen books after this! I’m looking forward to seeing if she can keep up this level in the coming books.

One caveat to all of this (and WARNING: THIS IS A SPOILER, so skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know): The title is a real problem. It is, in itself, a spoiler – there was no hint throughout most of the book that any kind of thievery was taking place so it really does reveal the end. And the second issue is that it is also wrong in a major way. I won’t say in what way (so not to spoil absolutely everything), but it is very definitely incorrect. Considering the great care Lawrence has given to making sure the details of this book are spot on, it is rather disappointing that she didn’t consider the title more carefully. But there you go.

I suppose it is not really important for this book as the main purpose is world-building and introducing us to the characters. The greater mysteries are the stories behind Jonathan, Nubia and Lupus, which we are sure to find out as the books progress. Then there’s also some hints of romances to come with some of the secondary characters that also suggest these characters will come more to the fore as time goes on too. I look forward to seeing where this all goes.

My Verdict:

Social Entrepreneur, educationalist, bestselling author and journalist, D K Powell is the author of the bestselling collection of literary short stories “The Old Man on the Beach“. His first book, ‘Sonali’ is a photo-memoir journal of life in Bangladesh and has been highly praised by the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide. Students learning the Bengali language have also valued the English/Bengali translations on every page. His third book is ‘Try not to Laugh’ and is a guide to memorising, revising and passing exams for students.

Both ‘The Old Man on the Beach’ and ‘Sonali’ are available on Amazon for kindle and paperback. Published by Shopno Sriti Media. The novel,’The Pukur’, was published by Histria Books in 2022.

D K Powell is available to speak at events (see his TEDx talk here) and can be contacted at dkpowell.contact@gmail.com. Alternatively, he is available for one-to-one mentoring and runs a course on the psychology of writing. Listen to his life story in interview with the BBC here.

Ken writes for a number of publications around the world. Past reviewer for Paste magazine, The Doughnut, E2D and United Airways and Lancashire Life magazine. Currently reviews for Northern Arts Review. His reviews have been read more than 6.9 million times.