Lawrence has not, as I suspected she might (because of her intended audience), shied away from the grim realities of life in ancient times. The descriptions of life in Ostia, from its temples, houses, forum and harbour, to the people who lived, worked and died in it, are richly detailed.
The book is short, fast-paced and full of wry humour. These three become her willing co-sleuths as Flavia tries to discover who is killing dogs in her neighbourhood. As the story progresses, she makes friends with Jonathan, Nubia and the mute beggar boy, Lupus. The heroine, the courageous Flavia, is a curious girl with more than a touch of the detective's skill. The Thieves of Ostia is a delightful and well-written read, full of accurate yet lightly woven-in descriptions of 1st century AD Roman Italy. Given that my pile of "To Be Read" books is never less than 50, and I have a young family, I didn't get around to reading it until yesterday, when I got a chance while on holiday. I had the privilege of meeting Caroline Lawrence about two years ago, and I went and bought this, the first of her books, at once, which is something I nearly always do after meeting an author. I guess serious study of the Roman triumphs will just have to wait for a while. There are 16 of these books so far, they've been made into a BBC series that's in at least its second year, and I liked this first one well enough to start the next one almost immediately.
The kids are very appealing, and there is just enough real violence to keep the stakes high.
There is a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter (she calls them "scrolls"), and she smuggles in quite a lot of lore about Roman life in general and the Latin language in particular. Aimed at 10-13 year olds, the series recounts the adventures of four children in 79AD, running around helping each other solve mysteries. So I immediately tried the first one, and it really was quite a treat. So I eagerly went there and found that she mentioned this excellent series by her old classmate in classics Caroline Lawrence, and highly recommended it. I noted in her bio that she has a fairly entertaining blog titled A Don's Life, to which she adds something about once a week. So I've been reading a book on Roman triumphs by one of the best classicists writing today, Mary Beard, who holds the chair in classics at Cambridge.
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