Food for the Fishes

by David Wishart

Overview

'Him and his fancy fish-farm, raking it in hand over fist. He's a bastard. A greedy bastard. Some people, they'd be better off dead, know what I mean?'Baiae, jewel of the Campanian coast and favourite playground of Rome's great and not-so-good. Gaius Trebbio, the town drunk, has every reason to hate his erstwhile landlord Licinius Murena, and when the man (or what's left of him) is found dead in one of his own conger-eel tanks Trebbio is the prime suspect. Not the only one, though: there's also Murena's widow, half his age with a penchant for young doctors, plus his daughter and put-upon farm manager. And that's only the start...The tenth book in the Marcus Corvinus series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534728622
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	12/13/2016
Series:	Marcus Corvinus , #10
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.46(d)

Editorial Reviews

Taut thrillers in which Ancient Rome springs to life.

The Times

Wishart's Roman nobleman risks his life as he probes the murder of an unpopular business magnate. Marcus Valerius Corvinus (Parthian Shot, 2004, etc.) is quickly bored with the idle decadence of Baiae, the Roman Riviera (think Vegas crossed with Sodom and Gomorrah), while vacationing there with his wife Perilla and his mother-so bored, in fact, that he almost agrees to befriend mom's dissolute boyfriend Priscus and sober him up. He's saved from this distasteful challenge by the killing of local fish-farm owner Licinius Murena, whom Corvinus, coincidentally, overheard being drunkenly reviled in a bar the night before. His abuser Trebbio, a longtime tenant of Murena, is the prime suspect in his murder. When he interviews the far-from-grieving family, however, Corvinus learns that there's no dearth of candidates. Murena had the distasteful habit of giving those around him unflattering nicknames, like Vagabond (his brother Nerva), Gadfly (his business partner Tattius) and Butterfly (his much-younger second wife Gellia). Household gossip targets family physician Diodotus (the Scowler), whose affair with Gellia is an open secret. Then suspicion shifts from Diodotus to Murena's daughter Penelope, Tattius' wife, who accuses her late father of having murdered her mother, and finally to Nerva, drowning in financial woes. Corvinus withstands multiple threats and a severe beating on his way to the surprising solution. Wishart continues to entertain with a droll first-person narrative and a solid puzzle.

Kirkus Reviews