There will be bodies

This thirteenth title in the Flavia Albia series (after Death on the Tiber, 2024) is, simply stated, the best so far. It is AD 90, and Tiberius Manlius, Albia's husband, has been commissioned by his uncle to restore an estate that has been buried in ash since the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius about a decade earlier, and to identify any victims uncovered. Straight away the remains of the previous owner, who appears to have died before the event, are found, along with those of enslaved people who were chained up and left to die. Albia is engaged by a local magistrate to investigate the previous owner's family. She meets with pirates and priestesses and joins forces with several colorful characters from her earlier cases in a relentless pursuit of the truth. As with all her other adventures, this one will leave readers exhausted. The extensive dusty travel by donkey alone is enough, but getting kidnapped and fending off a pickax-wielding maniac most definitely add to the strain. The exhilarating ending makes up for it all. Davis' fans should rejoice in the fact that after graduating Oxford and spending 13 years in the civil service she "ran away to be a writer."

Beneath the detritus of Mount Vesuvius lurk corpses and dark secrets. A decade after the devastating eruption in 79 C.E., veteran investigator Flavia Albia's uncle Tullius Icilius has shrewdly obtained a promising property in remote Stabiae on the Bay of Neapolis at a bargain price. The acquisition of this fixer-upper is coincidentally a potential godsend for Flavia and her husband, Tiberius Manlius, whose building company teeters on the edge of insolvency. This property, though, requires more than the usual heroic measures, for chained to the walls inside the partially damaged villa are a number of corpses. The righteous Flavia is incensed by this clear evidence of murder, or at least inhumane and reprehensible behavior, but her outrage is met with indifference, fear, and condescension. Not one to back down from a challenge, Flavia begins an ambitious probe to excavate the truth and discovers an even more ominous tableau suggestive of murder. Her 13th adventure is arguably her most complex and layered, grounded in a momentous historical event but also touching on issues of class, misogyny, and the tensions between urban and rural communities in addition to its central mystery. It is also Flavia's first case set outside the city of Rome, providing Davis the opportunity to exercise her considerable research skills in offering a vivid picture of the wider Empire. On the way to the intricate solution, Davis folds in several other subplots with historic roots. A detailed prefatory chart cheekily headed "Characters, mainly alive" helps immensely in keeping the tangled story and its large cast straight. Historical fiction of high quality, propelled by an intricate whodunit. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.