R.V. RAMAN'S PAGE: Harith Athreya series 1 & 2...GRAVE INTENTIONS, and A WILL TO KILL

A WILL TO KILL (Harith Athreya #1)
R.V. RAMAN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$2.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: MIST, MOUNTAINS, MURDER.

Ageing millionaire Bhaskar Fernandez has invited his relatives to the remote, and possibly haunted, Greybrooke Manor, high up in the misty Nilgiris.

He knows his guests expect to gain from his death, so he writes two conflicting wills. Which one of them comes into force will depend on how he dies.

Fernandez also invites Harith Athreya, a seasoned investigator, to watch what unfolds.

When a landslide leaves the estate temporarily isolated, and a body is discovered, Athreya finds that death is not the only thing that the mist conceals. . .

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My Review: First in a new series of private-investigator mysteries set in India. This Golden-Age style story about a murder yet to occur and fully expected by its purported victim that then morphs into a locked-room mystery is investigated by a Poirot-level famous private investigator. Or so we're told...I'm as always just a bit annoyed that I'm vouchsafed no evidence of this assertion, but that complaint is not one bit new or unusual.

I was set to love the read from the get-go because I read these reissues this summer. It's set in cool, misty mountains, and I about sobbed with jealousy as I compared that to the supersummer outside. *sigh* As I encountered more and more characters, beginning to wonder about a dramatis personae being notably absent. Such a simple thing to add, I mused, and so very helpful. It also struck me that the characters were more or less in the highwayman school: stand and deliver their piece of the narrative. That's a lot of time spent outside the narrative stagecoach waiting to get moving again.

A body is discovered. It means we're all in the stagecoach again, moving at a slightly bouncy, uncushioned pace. It becomes a locked-room mystery as we're moving along; no change of bouncing rocking pace as we clunk shins and bonk shoulders with characters who *are* going to say their piece, despite earlier attitudinal tics. It could have something to do with the sausage-fest we're having here, everyone is male and don't they just show it. A second body is discovered and there is more stand-and-deliver set-piece delivery. A big problem for me is no one who's died is at all, in any way, undeserving of their murder.

It's like a lesser Poirot story meant to convey the eerieness of The Pale Horseman. It works as a story well enough because we know where we're going. It's a bit less effective if the reader's not already on board with the Golden-Age conventions because then the solution, and its delivery by Athreya, ties everything to objects we're aware exist but not filled in on particulars about. It makes the solution a bit less impactful, more like the delivery of a sermon that we and everyone else, simply accept is true and so must be correct.

Points for period appropriateness, then, fewer for fair-play mystery solution, and please dear goddesses give me a damn list of who's who at the beginning. As a series starter I'm most definitely glad I've got all four in their reissue; I don't think I'd've picked up the second one (see below) if it had come out a year or more later.

The ebook is on sale, so definitely go get one!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


GRAVE INTENTIONS (Harith Athreya #2)
R.V. RAMAN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Death, a cursed archaeological dig, and a beloved detective feature in this cozy stand-alone mystery set in contemporary India.

SECRETS

Seasoned detective Harith Athreya is back, this time to investigate suspicious incidences on a riverside dig in the heart of remote Bundelkhand.

SUPERSTITION

In this place, rich in myth and history, the legend goes that anyone who sets foot on nearby island Naaz Tapu would be cursed forever.

SLAUGHTER

When an archaeologist defies local folklore, the fallout is swift and deadly. Is the death a result of the ancient curse, or is it a more down-to-earth case of murder? Athreya needs to unravel the truth from legend before the curse strikes again….

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Archaeology! Possible supernatural stuff! A Dramatis Personae! Yes, yes, yes to all of these as good omens, and ways to get my repeat business.

On to the story.

Book two sets itself the task of telling us binaries exist for a reason, there is nothing we do not want to be expressed in a well-matched faceoff between, eg, two young women who are chilly career driven professional/warm, inclusive, family-loving opposites. Athreya is on a holiday with the latter, a nibling of his, and the former is the director of a "cursed" archaeological dig where a local wise guy seems to be stealing artifacts the dig is uncovering. A local legend of lovers kept apart by centuries old political feuding placing the area under a curse offers a modern murderer cover is the first thought a mystery fan would have; but who wants the specific person dead and why? What is the dig site looking for? Do local customs only matter if the people flouting them are white/colonizer people?

Again requested to solve a crime yet to take place, Athreya immediately zooms in on the artifact thefts but...well...are they thefts or rescues of cultural patrimony? Who decides this? What difference does it make, if the end result is the object ends up far far away leaving nothing in its place? Knowledge of the past that will never be accessible to the cultural descendants is no more complete a theft than a profitably sold antiquity....

In the quest to solve the mysteries via fair play, Author Raman snuck a valuable clue past me...in plain sight! Well done, sir. I enjoyed the Murder in Mesopotamia meets The White Tiger vibes. It felt more cohesive and less speechifyin' in tone than A Will to Kill (above) did. The read passed with admirable velocity, the Dramatis Personae made a big difference to my sense of the read as under my control, and Athreya's enough more familiar to me this time around that I felt prepared from the off to invest in his resolution.

A career spent making corporate presentations and mentoring young entrepreneurs has taught Author Raman to stay nimble, to choose a principle at the center of the story he wants to tell then to be sure his story relates to that principle all the way through. That serves him well in this second Athreya mystery/thriller.

DOUBLE SHADOW, second Splinter Effect series time-traveling archaeologist story

DOUBLE SHADOW (Splinter Effect #2)
ANDREW LUDINGTON
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this thrilling installment of the Splinter Effect series, time-traveling archaeologist Rabbit Ward returns to the past to help save his former adversary and track down a murderous thief in first century Jerusalem.

ROME, 2019. Time-traveling, Smithsonian archaeologist Rabbit Ward is back in the present, but not for long. Helen, his former adversary and growing ally, is in trouble with the law after being framed for a murder she didn’t commit. Stuck in hiding and running out of other options, she turns to Rabbit for help. "Help" in this case involves a trip to first century Jerusalem to track down a mysterious man named Einar Eshek.

But Rabbit won't have to do this mission alone; as soon as he arrives in 68 CE, he meets a younger version of Helen, one who has never met him before. Together, they work to track down Eshek, who turns out to be not only a time-traveling thief, but a murderous psychopath.

As they pursue Eshek through time, Rabbit and Helen feel something even bigger pulling them together. Torn between the two versions of the woman he knows, and with the clock ticking down on Helen’s fate in 2019, Rabbit might have no choice but to betray her past self to secure Helen’s safety in the future. Tensions rise as Jerusalem prepares to go to war with Rome, and Rabbit races to capture Eshek, clear Helen’s name, and make it back to 2019 in one piece—a feat that’s proving to be easier said than done—before everything falls apart.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Author Ludington...are you stark staring mad?! In this absolutely bonkers passage in world history, which no matter how long the editing process on this story took you were writing while the US political landscape's ablaze with AIPAC news, you release a book set in a rebellious Judea! It's a choice....

So, aside from the geopolitical timing seeming to my eyes a bit on the nose, I was verschmeckeled at the twist of Rabbit...I really wish his nickname wasn't evocative of Rabbit bloody Angstrom, that pusillanimous milquetoast...encountering a younger version of his frenemy Helen from the first book. I know a lot of people who find time travel stories not to their taste for this very trope, to the point of not watching Doctor Who despite the glorious beauty of Alex Kingston as River Song, if you can imagine such masochism, because she meets the Doctor at asymmetric moments in each of their lives. "It can't happen! It's never happened!" Maybe...but don't you crave a Jake-and-Sadie moment from 11/22/63? I, clearly, do not share this cavil. In this particular iteration of the trope, I found a real aha! moment for some things in the first book. I really like that in a series story. I want to feel there are webs of interconnection that I sense but don't yet see because that happens in life as well.

So all that to say I found this story as much to my liking as it's ever gonna get when there are straight people centering it. Rabbit and Helen's dynamic in particular feels richly textured with powerful emotions clashing and shifting in each of them every time they meet. In this story, as Helen does not know Rabbit yet, we get the unedited version of her responses to him. If the fact she's trying to kill him says anything, it's something *good* about her character...she is a professional with clear goals. I admit that, as the story began, I was a bit surprised that Helen reached out to Rabbit for this specific kind of help, but it made perfect sense as I was swept along in the tides of developments. Einar Eshek, our villain, was villainous. Rabbit, our hero, was resourceful, determined, and required always to think on his feet; that's a feat any author who's using this character trait gets kudos from me the more successfully they pull it off. I didn't notice Rabbit navigating his altered relationship to Helen as awkward or forced into convenient resolutions to knotty conflicts. That is a rare compliment from someone like me, very experienced in reading series stories.

I found the resolution to the central conundrum...chasing Einar, exonerating *2018-Helen...fit the facts, satisfied the overarching plot, and resolved the immediate story tensions with a very clear intent to publish more of these characters' stories in the future.

Bring it. Soon, please and thank you.

SPLINTER EFFECT, watch out St Mary's! New kid is in town

SPLINTER EFFECT (Splinter Effect #1)
ANDREW LUDINGTON
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this action-packed debut, time traveling archaeologist Rabbit Ward maneuvers through the past to recover a long-lost, precious menorah hiding out in ancient Rome.

Smithsonian archaeologist Rabbit Ward travels through time on sponsored expeditions to the past to secure precious artifacts moments before they are lost to history. Although exceptional at his job, Rabbit is not without faults. In a spectacular failure twenty years ago, he lost both the menorah of the second temple and his hot-headed mentee, Aaron. So, when new evidence reveals the menorah’s reappearance in 6th century Constantinople, Rabbit seizes the chance for redemption.

But from the moment he arrives in the past, things start to go wrong. Rabbit quickly finds out that his prime competition, an unlicensed and annoyingly appealing “stringer” named Helen, is also in Constantinople hunting the menorah. And that’s only the beginning. The oppressed Jewish population of the city is primed for revolution, Constantinople’s leading gang seems to have it out for Rabbit personally, and someone local is interested enough in the menorah to kill for it.

As the past closes in on him and his previous failures compound, will Rabbit be able to recover the menorah before it's once again lost in time?

With new and old dangers alike hiding behind every corner, time might just be up for Rabbit’s redemption—and possibly his life.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Jodi Taylor's St Mary's series might need to smarten up their extremely British...let's be honest, English...monomania if Rabbit of the Smithsonian catches on. Much as I love Max, Peterson, and Markham, they need some competition, and here they've got it.

Opening at (one of the several events leading to) the burning of the Library of Alexandria was a genius bait-and-switch. By itself that is an event I would, and have, eagerly read a book about, but here it's only a teaser for Rabbit and his relationship to the Smithsonian. Time travel, inherently threatening to powerful people, is here presented as a tech tightly wrapped in rules. Of course these favor the status quo, and the very, very rich. But I repeat myself...Rabbit's a nepo baby with some time-travel failures behind him including a search for the maguffin in this book, the menorah stolen by Rome from the Jews. It's a real white-whale tale, and not just for Rabbit.

Helen, his antagonist, is also hot for this (solid-gold) candelabra of god's. She's not at all as well-developed as Rabbit is, and frankly I hope they drop her in any future iterations of the book...I didn't like Clive Ronan either (IYKYK). Their reasons aren't explored. I don't think they matter. After all, it's made of gold so greed's more than enough. Here's probably a good place to note that the world as we know it is part of a multiverse. In this splinter (note resemblance to title), there's legal-but-restricted time travel. In others, there's none whether legal or not. You see how immense this storyverse is? Imagine for a moment the things a writer can do in this sandbox!

Earlier versions of this idea have mostly centered around the Time Patrol (Poul Anderson) or The Paratime Police (H. Beam Piper) tasked with preventing anyone from causing time loops or retrocausal gubbins or generally being dickish to our hominin ancestors. (I think it's telling that intertemporal stories about Homo sapiens interacting with any earlier species, or even earlier time in history, all contain some fraud or slavery elements.)

Here the only thing remotely criminal is, arguably, the richest benefiting from Rabbit and his ilk going into the past to retrieve things that're lost to history by idiotic violence, sheer human stupidity, or Earth's natural processes (eg, earthquakes or fires). I'm not squeamish enough about this to give the book a black mark. I *am* squeamish about young, hot Helen being Rabbit's nemesis and Doctor PJ being his girlfriend, because absolutely nothing can be left un-romance-ified and of course that means heterosexual. Ugh. There went a half-star. (Though, to be fair, there are hints that Rabbit himself might be, um, heteroflexible.)

The other half-star disappeared because, though I liked the richly detailed world of 536 Constantinople a lot, I'd've liked more people instead of labels talking. It feels more like infidumping when I have no idea who "the customs official" or any of the other so-yclept faceless ones are. Still, four stars is the absolute minimum a book with this ending could possibly receive. Even moreso because, if this isn't a series-starter, I'll eat my hat for breakfast without ketchup.

I'll be right here waiting for more Rabbit. Without a ketchup bottle.

FOLLOWING CAESAR: From Rome to Constantinople, the Pathways That Planted the Seeds of Empire, armchair travel with the best kind of guide

FOLLOWING CAESAR: From Rome to Constantinople, the Pathways That Planted the Seeds of Empire
JOHN KEAHEY
St. Martin's Press
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A travel narrative following three ancient roads and looking at more than two thousand years of history of Ancient Rome through the modern eye.

In 66 B.C., young, ambitious Julius Caesar, seeking recognition and authority, became the curator of the Via Appia. He borrowed significant sums to restore the ancient highway. It was a way to curry favor from Roman citizens in villages along the route, built from Rome to Brindisi between 312-191 B.C. He succeeded and rapidly grew in popularity. After achieving greatness in Rome and the far reaches of Gaul, he led armies along this road to battle enemies in Roman civil wars. And then, across the Adriatic Sea, he joined Via Appia's sister road, the Via Egnatia that began in today's Albania. Other armies followed these two roads that eventually connected Rome to Byzantium, today's Istanbul. Octavian, who became, in 27 B.C., Rome's first emperor, and his friend and later enemy Mark Antony traveled portions of both roads to defeat Caesar's murderers Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in eastern Macedonia. The great Roman statesman Cicero, the Roman poet Homer, the historian Virgil and many other notables traveled along one or both of these roads. In the first century of the Roman Empire in the earliest years of Christianity, the apostles Peter and Paul traversed portions of them. Pilgrims, seeking salvation in far-away Jerusalem, followed them as well throughout much of the Middle Ages. In the early second century A.D., the emperor Trajan charted a new coastal route between Benevento and Brindisi, later called the Via Traiana.

Today, short stretches of the original three roads can be seen in the ruins of ancient Roman cities, now preserved as archaeological wonders, and through the countryside near, and sometimes under, modern highways. Following those routes is the purpose of treading along the path that Caesar and so many others took over the early centuries. Modern eyes, seeing through the mists of more than two thousand years of history, lead the traveler along these three roads coursing through six countries between Rome and Istanbul. It is a journey full of adventure, discovery, and friendship―one one worth taking.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I enjoy history for itself, and the many present-day echoes of historical events just add texture to my pleasure. This historical-tourism book was as deeply involving to me as a standard historical narrative because the conceit...following the Roman roads...is my idea of a great adventure vacation. The author was my guide on this escape from home. It worked as well as anything could because I knew I was in experienced hands (he has written four other books on touring Italy as a history buff.)

While I was very interested in his veteran-journalist's observations of the world traversed by the Roman roads he then traversed himself, and by his reports of his companions' responses to the modern world as well as the archaeology of the paths they traveled together, I was very disappointed that the book contained NO maps or photos.

Don't let that lapse stop you from enjoying the informed, intelligent voice of this forty-five-year veteran reporter as he shares his observations of the world he's moving through. His lifelong fascination with Italy and Rome (men really *are* obsessed with Rome!) gives him a very full view of the countries and regions he takes us through. This book is one of those rare books that, just as a reading experience, solely for the way the author builds an image and creates a simile, is a pleasure to read.

That his trip in Turkey, Asia Minor that was, coincided with COVID and its joys was very evocative for him. Plenty of plagues to meditate on. His religious ruminations are interesting to my deeply, faithfully atheist self...the road network of ancient Rome, and its internal postal connections enabled thereby, are largely responsible for the spread of the religion all across the empire. (There were christians in Pompeii...they found a ROTAS square there! By 79AD there were christians in Italy!)

I do want to mention that the "Caesar" of the title is not Julius; remember that Caesar was a title during the empire, and Trajan, whose Via Traiana is followed, was also a Caesar.

Self-gifting for a lovely time on #Booksgiving, as you settle down in your favorite reading spot, a beverage and a snack close at hand...Italy is involved, there is going to be food talk...and immerse yourself in a part of the world that could not possibly be richer in cultural highlights.

One star off for the absence of photos and/or illustrations.