This series grows more and more interesting as I follow it, for three key reasons -- characterization, context, and curiosity. The characters are fully drawn and individualized, particularly the central character (Pliny) and his friends and family. The context, the historical context that is, is richly detailed and convincing: this one is set at Pliny's country estate, and captures this rural aspect of ancient Rome. Finally, the curiosity sparked by a compelling plot kept me turning the pages, as it did in the two earlier books in the series. Altogether a satisfactory mystery, with a soupcon of the supernatural. ( )

The third in the delightful, highly recommended "Notebooks of Pliny the Younger" mystery series. In this one, the author stirred up a tasty stew involving an apparent murder [after which the man's body disappears the next morning from Pliny's stables: how?]; a really brutal murder; arson; and an unsolved murder from fifteen years previously about which the villagers of Laurentum are closemouthed and secretive. The village lies near Pliny's country villa, 17 miles from Rome, where he and his mother are staying. The story involves a money-making scam and an acrostic in Hebrew. Pliny's presented with this question: is the young woman, Daphne, who is looking for her father really an empusa, a blood-sucking shapeshifter figure in Roman folklore, as she claims to be? A bat and a dolphin are important figures in the story; can this be she in other guises? The father is purportedly a 700-year old man. Pliny and Tacitus piece this together from a reading of Herodotus.

The whole story was most original and smoothly written. I liked how the author dropped in bits of literature, folklore, mythology, and facts about Roman culture. Pliny and his friend Tacitus are growing on me as characters; they are very engaging and make good foils to each other. What one overlooks or misses as clues or explanations, the other picks up. Their personalities complement each other. Pliny's mother, Lady Plinia, is a dear soul but a bit meddlesome. I was impressed by the author's own translation of one of the real-life Pliny's Letters: 2.17, in which he describes in great detail his Laurentian villa, invites a friend to visit and gives directions. Certain elements of the layout of the villa were incorporated into the story and influenced certain actions. ( )

While "hunting" on one of his country estates, Pliny finds a dead man in the woods. After examining the body Pliny decides he died very recently but is unable to determine how and has him taken back to the stables to protect the body from animals. Although a guard was placed in the stables the body had vanished the next morning. A very handsome young man turns up claiming that the body was his 700 year old father who wasn't really dead, just in a trance. Then a mysterious young woman turns up claiming that on the contrary the body was her father who had been duped by the young man. The young woman may or may not be an empusa, a type of vampire. And then things start to get complicated.

This was both an intriguing puzzle and an amusing romp. I couldn't help but feel sorry for Pliny as these extraordinary people turn his world upside down, disrupting his household with their outrageous claims till he doesn't know what to believe. But rationality wins out in the end and a present day murder leads to the solution of another murder 15 years before as two families' secrets are laid bare. ( )