Book Review: The Roman Mysteries XII – The Charioteer of Delphi by Caroline Lawrence

“The plot was every bit as engaging as the first books…”

We’re back to the kind of writing Caroline Lawrence was coming up with at the beginning of this wonderful series of books telling the stories of four young would-be detectives in ancient Roman times.

There’s no love intrigues or talk of marriage, no hugely awful catastrophe awaiting, or caused by, the children and no mass kidnapping of children, as often occurs in the books. Instead, we’ve got a nice straightforward mystery: who is trying to kill off the charioteers of the Green team in the chariot races at the Circus Maximus?

Along the way, we also get to know more about Nubia, the ex-slave girl rescued by her friend, Flavia, in the very first book. She is, by far, the best character of the four. She is kind, peaceful, graceful and – despite her quiet modesty – immensely intelligent and skilled. In this story we learn of her love for, and close affinity with, the horses at the Circus Maximus. Indeed, her understanding is really quite supernatural.

Lawrence has managed the spiritual and supernatural with skilful ease in these stories. I did worry that the books were going to be a vehicle for pushing Christianity but, thankfully, that didn’t happen even though it gets an awful lot of mentioning in the early books. Later, there’s hints that the Roman gods are looking after the children. It is in this book though that we see Nubia able to communicate with the horses. It isn’t over-the-top and I guess you could just about put it down to her fanciful imagination if you so wish, but really she has the gift with horses and that’s taken as read by all the characters.

As always, Lawrence’s knowledge of history is superb and it is genuinely impossible to figure out what’s based on fact and what on fiction. Aristo’s Scroll, given at the end of every book, gives the lowdown on what’s fact, what’s theory and what’s total fabrication. I was very much surprised reading it this time around; I’ll say no more than that.

Considering this is the twelfth book and it is hard to keep up the momentum with this kind of series, the author has done a remarkable job here. The plot was every bit as engaging as the first books and the storyline really quite exciting. Teenagers will love it and so will adults too!

My verdict:

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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 7.9 million times.

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