Historical Novelist
Books
Sunday Times Crime Club Star Pick
A Comedy of Terrors
Flavia Albia book 9
Written in Lockdown, so perhaps unusual wildness colours this story. It is Saturnalia. Albia has to manoeuvre through riotous festivities, knowing that the arrival of her husband’s two bereaved little nephews means she is trapped. Everyone expects her to make everything run smoothly for her household – presents, lights, decorations, and not choosing the wrong person as King for the Day. She doesn’t want to be maternal, she wants a job – but work has stopped for the holiday. While her husband is drawn into a sinister vigiles investigation that he doesn’t want to talk about, Albia is stuck with nothing better than defending a tug-of-love parrot belonging to a deeply unreliable client. She should have taken on the priestess who lost her twins in a shipwreck, twenty five years ago…
Don’t eat the nuts. Don’t even look at Xero’s pies. Don’t set fire to your house, it’s the Fourth Cohort’s annual drinks debacle again, so they won’t come. The Emperor is holding a party, with a dangerous fireworks display. And as winter descends, somewhere on the Aventine a dark gangster with a dangerous lieutenant is plotting to take over everything…
Reader Favourite
‘They think you’re a Druid, Albia, so just give them the evil eye!’ Chosen by Anna Kucharska