Book review: The Triumph of Caesar by Steven Saylor

I was browsing the clearance section of the local Half Price Books when I spotted a familiar name on a spine: Steven Saylor.  In my first year of college, spring semester of 1992, I took a Roman Civ & Culture class that had, as one of its requirements, to read a work of fiction set in Ancient Rome.  The book I selected was a detective story starring Gordianus the Finder, Roman Blood, by a first-time novelist named Steven Saylor.

I knew Saylor had written some sequels, as I kept up with them for a book or two, borrowing them from the library in my hometown during vacations, but after moving away for grad school, I completely forgot about them until I saw this hardcover on the shelf.  Could he possibly still be writing Gordianus books? I wondered.

The answer, as it turns out, was yes.  The forty-second book I read in 2015 was The Triumph of Caesar, the twelfth in the series.  Despite not having given the series any thought in twenty-odd years, I remembered Gordianus, and even a few of the supporting characters seemed familiar from the first three books.  Set more than thirty years after the first installment, The Triumph of Caesar finds Gordianus nearing the end of his career.  His career as Finder has proved relatively lucrative and has won him powerful friends; the story opens with Julius Caesar's wife seeking Gordianus's help in uncovering what she believes to be a threat on Caesar's life during the week of his Triumph, a series of parades celebrating his victories in Egypt and elsewhere.

A bit too much of the didact comes through at times -- dialogue in which the characters over-explain everyday habits to each other, "As you, of course, know, it has long been our custom to...."  Still, to reacquaint myself with Gordianus after such a long time in such a serendipitous way was a delight, and it motivated me to seek out the rest of the series, both the ones I read twenty years ago and have largely forgotten, and the ones I missed.