“What does a Classics scholar do for fun?
Author Kelli Stanley has a Classics education and an astonishingly wide range of interests and achievements. It's our good luck that one of her interests is noir fiction, or in this case the "roman noir," a nice little pun describing her wonderful new novel Nox Dormienda: A Long Night for Sleeping (An Arcturus Mystery). The book is set in 83 A.D. Londinium, a trading center in the Roman province of Brittania under the governorship of Agricola. Agricola is a little too successful and popular, and that's not good news for Domitian, the Roman emperor. Domitian sends a spy to watch Agricola, the spy is murdered, and Agricola's doctor Arcturus has just seven days to discover who murdered the spy to avert a serious civil war.
Stanley's knowledge of the Roman age gives NOX DORMIENDA an unexpected sense of immediacy, and her other love -- noir fiction -- brings a gritty, Sam Spade realism to the first-person story of Arcturus. Besides hardboiled dialogue, there is insider's scuttlebutt from two centuries ago. For example, speaking of Domitian, Arcturus says, "I'd met the Emperor just once. Even then he was more pedant than scholar. And he never laughed. Vespasian was a garrulous old sod who never minded a good joke, even at his own expense. But his slight, bald, correct-to-the-letter son believed in his own sanctity too much. He wasn't much of a god, still less of a man."
The book finishes with an informative author's note (Stanley begins, "I'm going to try to keep this what it claims to be: a note, rather than a thesis"). There is also a glossary and list of references in the back. And if that's not enough, you may want to check out Kelli Stanley's website, where I spent part of this rainy afternoon.
Stanley plans more books in the Arcturus series, which is a very good thing. Bene!”
