Gaius Petrius Ruso is a divorced and down-on-his-luck army doctor who has made the rash decision to seek his fortune within an inclement outpost of the Roman Empire, namely Britannia. His introduction in Deva (additionally referred to as Chester, England) does small to boost his feeling, and after a right thirty-six-hour shift in the army medical center, he succumbs to an instant of weakness and rescues an hurt slave female, Tilla, in the hands of her abusive owner.

Now he has a fresh issue: a slave who won’t on the subject of Medicus: A Novel chat, can’t make, and drags problems in her wake. Before he knows it, Ruso is certainly caught in the middle of an investigation into the deaths of prostitutes working out of the neighborhood bar. A couple of years previously, after he rescued Emperor Trajan from an earthquake in Antioch, Ruso seemed headed for glory; today he’s living among heathens inside a vermin-infested bachelor pad and must summon all his forensic knowledge to discover a killer who could be after him next.

Who will be the true barbarians, the conquered or the conquerors? It’s up to Ruso-certainly probably the most likeable sleuth to come out of the Roman Empire-to discover the truth. With something special for comic timing and historic details, Ruth Downie offers conjured a historical world as raucous and genuine as our own.