- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd (25 Jun 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0727861174
- ISBN-13: 978-0727861177
- Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 14.4 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 744,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Synopsis
When the King of Histri invites Claudia to visit, she assumes it's connected to her role as a merchant of fine wines. How wrong can she be? And, before long, all manner of assumptions are proved false. Histria is a paradise of rolling vineyards, olive groves and golden beaches lapped by the velvety-warm Adriatic - but the more Claudia learns about Histrian society, the more deeply involved she becomes in the tragedy unfolding within it. Did genuine accidents befall the King's family? Or were their deaths caused, as she suspects, by something more sinister? Worse, why does no one believe her when she tells them she witnessed a murder?
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Glamorous Roman widow Claudia Seferius is still struggling to run the wine business left her by her late husband. She gets what she thinks is an offer from the King of Histria to buy her wine, so she travels to his kingdom, only to discover that he has quite a different sort of contract in mind. A lot of ill luck has befallen the Histrian royal family, sudden and unexpected deaths have decimated the line. Claudia thinks she knows who is at the back of it all, but is she right? She witnesses a murder, but nobody believes her. Her would-be lover, security officer Marcus Orbillio turns up to investigate the matter of a runaway slave. Claudia gets to know Salome, a widow who runs a sort of feminist commune for battered women, and holds some rather improbably anachronistic views on women's rights.Does she have something to do with the sinister deaths among the royal family? Claudia is a delightful heroine, clever, resourceful, unscrupulous, cunning and rude. Marcus is gorgeous, handsome, charming, sexy "international moon of mystery". The story is exciting and moves along fast. I must admit though that I am beginning to get just a little tired of the way the two recurring themes of Claudia's life drag on without any developments. Will she make a go of running the wine business? And will she and Marcus ever get it together? By the end of this book, much though I enjoyed it, I did find myself wishing that SOMETHING would happen to develop one or both of these themes. I wish there'd be a breakthrough in the wine business. And I wish she and Marcus would go to bed together. In spite of these feelings of discontent, I still enjoyed the book very much.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Claudia, the "heroine" of Marilyn Todd's novels, is a beautiful, feisty young widow and former tavern dancer of an affluent Roman wine merchant. She receives a letter of invitation and gifts from the King of Histria. She mistakenly assumes that he has contacted her because of her position as a wine merchant and would like to place an order for some expensive wines. How wrong can she be.
As she is being followed around Rome by creditors who are becoming more and more impatient with her lack of funds she sees the invitation as an opportunity to get out of Rome for a while and eagerly accepts his invitation and takes the first boat to Histria and the tangled plot of deceit, subterfuge and murder begins.
Only Claudia could become embroiled in such tumult and human destruction. The plot has a nice twist at the end but I will leave that one for the reader.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Weakest novel to date
2 Sep 2004
Format:Hardcover
It's unfortunate, but Todd's tenth Claudia Seferius mystery is probably the worst.
Todd has has our lovable heroine hotfooting it off to the tiny Roman governed client kingdom of Histria. Failure to read the contractual small print means she thinks she's off to negotiate a lucrative wine contract but after considerable stringing along she discovers that it's in fact to marry the King. After ariving on the peninsula she finds herself chaperoned by the effortlessly personable Mazares, the oak tree that is Pavan and the King's close family comprising the King's brother, Kazan, his wife Rosmerta, their sons, Marek and Mir and finally Vanu, married to one of the sons but sleeping with Kazan. As usual bodies start turning up although these are historical. - Mazares first wife, Brac - first in line to throne, the old king Dol, Mazares, son and daughter, a boat builder, the physician until we get quite a list. After dressing up as a goddess for the Zeltane festival Caludia spends most her time figuring out how to escape her impending matimony and the rest half heartedly chasing down ridiculous murder theories and spending time at the local stray waifs farm headed up by Salome, Tobias, Lora and the rest of the white robed Amazons.
All the while we get Todd's small chapter inserts into the mind of the murderer - this time called Nosferatu.
It's all a bit tedious until Orbilio turns up to turn over Claudia's stomach again and save the day, Claudia, and anyone else who happens to be around. As I said, this is the weakest of the Serferius novels simply because it's not exciting in any way and Claudia's heart's just not in it. Maybe we've a classic case of Davis here - our heroine needs to be in Rome to be at her best. Hopefully the next one will have Claudia back to her spitting, fiery self...
Todd has has our lovable heroine hotfooting it off to the tiny Roman governed client kingdom of Histria. Failure to read the contractual small print means she thinks she's off to negotiate a lucrative wine contract but after considerable stringing along she discovers that it's in fact to marry the King. After ariving on the peninsula she finds herself chaperoned by the effortlessly personable Mazares, the oak tree that is Pavan and the King's close family comprising the King's brother, Kazan, his wife Rosmerta, their sons, Marek and Mir and finally Vanu, married to one of the sons but sleeping with Kazan. As usual bodies start turning up although these are historical. - Mazares first wife, Brac - first in line to throne, the old king Dol, Mazares, son and daughter, a boat builder, the physician until we get quite a list. After dressing up as a goddess for the Zeltane festival Caludia spends most her time figuring out how to escape her impending matimony and the rest half heartedly chasing down ridiculous murder theories and spending time at the local stray waifs farm headed up by Salome, Tobias, Lora and the rest of the white robed Amazons.
All the while we get Todd's small chapter inserts into the mind of the murderer - this time called Nosferatu.
It's all a bit tedious until Orbilio turns up to turn over Claudia's stomach again and save the day, Claudia, and anyone else who happens to be around. As I said, this is the weakest of the Serferius novels simply because it's not exciting in any way and Claudia's heart's just not in it. Maybe we've a classic case of Davis here - our heroine needs to be in Rome to be at her best. Hopefully the next one will have Claudia back to her spitting, fiery self...
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Greatly disappointing
12 April 2005
Format:Hardcover
I checked this out from the library when I found the latest Falco book was checked out. I wanted to try some Roman mystery by a different author.
What a mistake. This book was a great disappointment. The characters were mostly annoying. The anachronistic references were even more annoying (I find it unlikely that "Little Miss Moffet" was an ancient Roman nursery rhyme). The last straw was when the characters started making puns that only worked in English (yet the characters, one assumes, were supposedly speaking Latin).
The mystery was okay. There didn't seem to be much in the way of clues--just a bunch of guesses based on Claudia's intuition (most of which turns out to be irrelevant anyway). The ending is a surprise, but a good surprise is of the "I should have seen that! You got me," variety. This was more of a "Where did that come from? That seems rather desparate," surprise.
Perhaps the other books in the series are better. I think I'll stick to Steven Saylor and Lindsey Davis.
What a mistake. This book was a great disappointment. The characters were mostly annoying. The anachronistic references were even more annoying (I find it unlikely that "Little Miss Moffet" was an ancient Roman nursery rhyme). The last straw was when the characters started making puns that only worked in English (yet the characters, one assumes, were supposedly speaking Latin).
The mystery was okay. There didn't seem to be much in the way of clues--just a bunch of guesses based on Claudia's intuition (most of which turns out to be irrelevant anyway). The ending is a surprise, but a good surprise is of the "I should have seen that! You got me," variety. This was more of a "Where did that come from? That seems rather desparate," surprise.
Perhaps the other books in the series are better. I think I'll stick to Steven Saylor and Lindsey Davis.
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